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Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

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Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#691

Post by wkjagt »

UncleMeat wrote: post #492
denton-scratch wrote: post #214

"Comprises" means "consists of". So "comprised of" means "consists of of". It's not just that some people dislike it; it's simply wrong. Whenever I come across the word "utilize" in WP, I change it to "use" (with the edit comment "Don't utilize utilize"). Nobody's ever reverted me for that. I think there is a proper use for the verb "utilize": it means "to render useful". But usually, it's just a substitute for "use"…

"Yeah no" and "No yeah" mean clear and different things, despite being superficially total nonsense. I've probably heard "comprised of" thousands of times in my life to mean "made of." What's wrong with phrases having meaning?

Whenever I read "yeah no", it reminds me of HN comments from people disagreeing with someone. I have no idea when "no yeah" would be used though.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#692

Post by samirillian »

soraminazuki wrote: post #658
fsckboy wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength > The similarity is uncanny. Is it extremely disrespectful to point out that your previous comment is defending the position that "to comprise is to compose"?

First, my original comment wasn't about defending anything. My objection was limited to a specific justification the Wikipedia editor made. Second, the phrase is "comprised of," not "to comprise." Finally, I'd also like to point out that the editor and all people in this thread clearly knows how the phrase is used today. What's the point of arguing about the correctness of a phrase when it does a perfect job of conve…

> What's the point of arguing about the correctness of a phrase when it does a perfect job of conveying meaning?

See this is what I mean when I say that your position is closer to the Newspeak ethos. What's wrong with ungood, after all? It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#693

Post by samirillian »

msla wrote: post #665
samirillian wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with your 1984 analogy at all. A better source might be George Orwell's actual, explicit opinions on politics and the English language: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... Orwell certainly did not take an "anything goes" approach to language, which is essentially what you and others argue for, in the mistaken belief that you're somehow striking a blow at totalitarianism. From…

Orwell wasn't a linguist, so his ideas about language are suspect. Linguists study languages as natural things because that's how it works: Humans speak, humans change how they speak, and language evolves, whereas "Newspeak" was deliberately constructed such that "correctness" was controlled by a tight coterie of people in charge, utterly without regard for making language useful, which you'd know if you read the nov…

First of all, I have read 1984, and I wouldn't take issue with the analogy if I hadn't. Whether you have read any other books, I cannot say.

Second, you say Orwell isn't a linguist, and language just happens, but then you explicitly reference his fictional account of a prescribed language. Clearly, Esperanto is a prescribed language. So prescribed languages do exist, and political forces can shape languages, you just don't think that happens with English. Well I do. People reference so-called "descriptive" dictionaries and grammars, yet don't those texts themselves inherently acquire a prescriptive force, insofar as they originate at elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge and UChicago? Just as Dante's works acquired a prescriptive force for the Italian that was once highly regional, but needed standardization to support the nation-state.

I think descriptivism is an incredibly naive position to take when talking about modern languages that have agglomerated for explicit social, political, and economic projects, and I think that was Orwell's point.

Similar to David Foster Wallace's essay on English, we can either naively push the descriptivist line, or we can accept that "the powers that be" do indeed shape our language, and try to have our own voices heard, for what English ought to be.

So we can rail against the Newspeak that some editor on Wikipedia is supposedly forcing on us. We can say it's literally 1984. It's ungood! And we can happily return to talking about grokking and gatekeeping and unaliving, and undocumented immigrants, and unhoused people, and utilizing the new library, believing these words are good because they happened and that they happened because they're good.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#694

Post by School-Cotton »

vidarh wrote: post #458
denton-scratch wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"ne... pas" in French is nothing more nor less than the correct way of formulating certain kinds of statements containing a negative. If you left out either of "ne" or "pas" in such a construction, people would either laugh, or assume you were some kind of primitive language generator. It's absurd that English speakers are so tolerant of incorrect usage. It's partly the pedagogic principle that "All shall have prizes…

Or they'll assume you're a native speaker familiar with a given dialect or specific idioms. Dropping "ne" is common in spoken French many places to the point that to many speakers you'll sound stilted and/or old if you included it - the first time I was told (as a teenager) I sounded "old" for using ne..pas was around 30 years ago. The son in the family I stayed with on on a school trip back then found it hilarious h…

The reverse is possible too: there are some verbs (at least savoir and pouvoir, not sure if there are others) that can be negated just with ne, without pas, although it sounds stilted and old-fashioned. You are unlikely to encounter this in the real world but it does show up in books. For example Dumbledore in the French translation of Harry Potter says “je ne puis” and “je ne sais” a fair amount.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#695

Post by devnullbrain »

ludston wrote: post #645
devnullbrain wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too late to choose whether or not to be disdainful, you've already excluded them from understanding you.

It's never too late to learn the meaning of a new word. Why just yesterday I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo, where the author used "felicity" in a context I'd not seen before. Fortunately in my very pocket was a powerful device that includes a dictionary unsurpassed in the history of mankind, and thus my brief ignorance was swiftly overcome! Perhaps the author meant to exclude me? Oh dear...

Ambiguity in conversation leads to problems every day. Leisurely reading is another world entirely.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#696

Post by samirillian »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #609
samirillian wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay now you're just trolling me. The question that starts with "I have a question for you." Did you look at the Orwell link. > Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Language is indeed consciously shaped. Look at the history of Italian. It doesn't just happen, and Wikipedia definitely doesn't just happen. And if you…

Oh I think you're talking to two different people here, sorry. I never mentioned orwell.

[flagged]

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#697

Post by giraffe_lady »

samirillian wrote: post #696
giraffe_lady wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I think you're talking to two different people here, sorry. I never mentioned orwell.

[flagged]

You need to chill. I'm doing my best to engage with your viewpoint within my completely human tolerance of discredited scientific ideas. Like the other commenter said you're doing the language equivalent of endorsing phrenology here and all I can have is imperfect patience for it.

But I'm not trolling you or intentionally fucking with you or anything. You are fundamentally wrong about how language works and maybe what language even is, and you're extremely hostile to genuine attempts to engage with that so I'm gonna take off. Good luck with it.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#698

Post by soraminazuki »

samirillian wrote: post #692
soraminazuki wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, my original comment wasn't about defending anything. My objection was limited to a specific justification the Wikipedia editor made. Second, the phrase is "comprised of," not "to comprise." Finally, I'd also like to point out that the editor and all people in this thread clearly knows how the phrase is used today. What's the point of arguing about the correctness of a phrase when it does a perfect job of conve…

> What's the point of arguing about the correctness of a phrase when it does a perfect job of conveying meaning? See this is what I mean when I say that your position is closer to the Newspeak ethos. What's wrong with ungood, after all? It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.

See this is what I mean when I say your arguments resemble doublethink.

The Newspeak language eradicates words on the basis that they're redundant. The Wikipedia editor went to eradicate a phrase using the same justification. There's an obvious parallel here.

> It does a perfect job of conveying meaning.

This is a fact that holds true regardless of one's opinion. Yet, you're fallaciously framing this as an opinion to make it look like Oceania and I hold the same opinion.

When it comes to my actual opinion, I favor languages spoken as is. Newspeak, on the others hand, is an artificially restricted one. The false equivalence you made between these two conflicting positions can only be explained as doublethink.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#699

Post by samirillian »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #697
samirillian wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You need to chill. I'm doing my best to engage with your viewpoint within my completely human tolerance of discredited scientific ideas. Like the other commenter said you're doing the language equivalent of endorsing phrenology here and all I can have is imperfect patience for it. But I'm not trolling you or intentionally fucking with you or anything. You are fundamentally wrong about how language works and maybe wha…

I get heated about this lol. If you really meant well, I'm not sure what to say. Try reading a comment before responding to it. My original comment was about the validity of an Orwell analogy, a point which you have absolutely refused to engage.

Calling you a troll was my most charitable reading of your obtuseness, because if you weren't willfully so, you must be either unconsciously so, or, well, just bad at reading.

If I'm a phrenologist, so is Orwell, and newspeak is not a valid analogy.

Re: Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”

#700

Post by FabHK »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #234
p-e-w wrote: post #10

The justifications given in that essay leave a really bad taste in my mouth: > I believe using "comprised of" is poor writing, because > It's completely unnecessary. There are many other ways to say what the writer means by "comprised of". It adds nothing to the language. That's true for many, many other words. In fact, most instances of definite and indefinite articles "add nothing to the language", since the actual…

"Comprises" is frequently used in patent writing, but I have rarely seen it elsewhere. I think its use, both in patents and normal English, has a particular connotation, that "is comprised of" doesn't carry otherwise: * When I hear "X comprises Y and Z," I think that the author is saying that X includes Y and Z as its key parts, but is not precluding the existence of other parts * When I hear "X is comprised of Y and…

Interesting. I think when an author says "X comprises Y and Z”, they assert precisely that Y and Z constitute X, that is, are the only parts of X. Otherwise the author should have written “X contains” or “X includes Y and Z”.
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