731–735 of 735 posts
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> The prohibitions on ending a sentence with a preposition, “less” before a count noun, etc. are all made up out of thin air. Yes, as is not splitting infinitives. All nonsense. But "comprised of" is not nonsense. "Irregardless" is wrong". Etc. Not all prescriptions are nonsense.
The usage dates to 1704.
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Don’t make me throw my Strunk & White at you.
Is that still a thing?
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Yes it's a mistake exactly in the eyes of those who know the meaning of the word. "com" + "prise" = "grasp together". An error can be more common than the correct usage and still be an error. Would you accept "A table setting is included of plate, fork, knife and spoon." as correct usage? What if "included" becomes rarely used in the future and this incorrect usage becomes relatively popular? Would that make it corre…
> Would that make it correct? Nonsense. Why not? Plenty of English words evolved this way. What's the problem exactly? In linguistic terms, "comprised of" in English is commonly accepted and understood, and usage almost always overrides "logic" or other rules and regularities in the language.
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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.
It's almost as if, contrary to what the person three comments up says, languages evolve over time...