
One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake - interkats
https://medium.com/backchannel/meet-the-ultimate-wikignome-10508842caad
======
jeremysalwen
I looked this up, because I was confused about what authority deemed this part
of the English language a "grammatical mistake". Meriam Webster notes

>Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still
attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until
comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical
writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift
in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the
earlier senses. You should be aware, however, that if you use sense 3 you may
be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer
synonym such as compose or make up.

So it's not even an issue of grammar, it's just a meaning of "comprised" that
some people reject. And it's a usage which is clear, widely used, and doesn't
have logical issues (like "could care less"). Go figure.

~~~
curun1r
It's yet another fight between prescriptivists and descriptivists over what
defines correct language usage. English is full of examples where incorrect
usage became pervasive enough to become accepted as correct. But some people
fight that process because they don't like that the language changes as a
result of people using it ignorantly.

For me, it really comes down to how you view the purpose of language. If the
purpose is to convey meaning as accurately as possible, then these changes
devalue the language since the usages that result from ignorant speakers are,
by nature, less precise. The oft-cited "begging the question" has a very
precise meaning that's difficult to convey in other terms. When ignorant usage
widens the meaning, we lose the ability to easily refer to the more narrow
meaning.

On the other hand, you can view language as a shared cultural identity that's
always shifting and evolving organically. In that light, these minutiae are
pointless because the majority of speakers don't understand the subtlety and
never will. You can try to educate people, but you'll just end up alienating
them. As humans, we're evolved to learn language from our environment and the
people who talk to us, not from a textbook. So why would we consider the
textbook version to be the canonical version?

These two viewpoints are diametrically opposed and yet are both reasonable and
there are many well-educated people on both sides.

~~~
svachalek
I have to say I find myself on both. In general I find the descriptive view of
language to be far more flexible, pragmatic, and realistic. But certain
phrases such as "all intensive purposes" evoke such a strong response from my
gut that I just cannot abide it.

~~~
tedunangst
Are people defending "all intensive purposes"? I think descriptivists get a
bad rap sometimes for "anything goes" but that's not true either. All
intensive purposes is clearly a mistake.

~~~
DanBC
"Intensive purposes" (and "intense and purposes") is an eggcorn, so it's
started the long walk to acceptance.

[http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/32/intensive-
purposes/](http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/32/intensive-purposes/)

Edit: this is a nice article about it
[http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/23/magazine/on-language-
retur...](http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/23/magazine/on-language-return-of-
the-mondegreens.html)

~~~
tedunangst
Do eggcorns inevitably become standard usage? Usually the replacement has some
advantage, but here the original phrase is neither awkward not obtuse, and it
makes more sense.

------
jedberg
> About 8 million English Wikipedia articles are visited every hour, yet only
> a tiny fraction of readers click the ‘edit’ button in the top right corner
> of every page. And only 30,000 or so people make at least five edits per
> month to the quickly growing site.

You know, I used to make edits all the time. I stopped doing it because _every
single one_ was reverted. I'm willing to accept that maybe a few of the edits
were possibly incorrect, but I know for sure most of them were correct. And
yet the "owners" of the page are so uppity that they revert them anyway, so I
gave up.

~~~
_delirium
What kind of edits did you make? I fix grammar and spelling stuff semi-
regularly, along with sometimes more substantial edits, and haven't had that
experience. Fairly often when I fix a typo, the author whose typo I'm fixing
even clicks the "thank" button next to the edit. I recently had a minor hobby
of tracking down a/an mixups, like "an member", and I got no flak for that.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Spelling, minor grammar errors, and graffiti is all I'll fix nowadays. I won't
bother rewriting awkward sentences or the commonly encountered repetition of
the same facts in different paragraphs. I sure as hell won't add new content.
That consumes too much of my time for something that will likely be reverted
by a pedant who can't stand for their precious to be touched by someone else.

~~~
a3_nm
The problem with that approach is that if everyone does this, Wikipedia will
be dominated by pedants who discourage everyone else from contributing.

Wikipedia is a unique resource, it is everyone's resource, we can't afford to
lose it like this. Of course, given the scale of the project, some time has to
be sunk in the unpleasant task of dealing with users who don't understand how
the project works. It will be problematic if no one has the courage to do this
any longer...

------
ashark
> “He has, like, 15,000 edits, and he’s done almost nothing except fix the
> incorrect use of ‘comprised of’ in articles.”

Oh man, truly that is God's work. It's likely too late, but it would be nice
to save "to comprise" as a distinctive word with its own shades of meaning and
differing usage from "to be composed of". Should one become a perfect synonym
for the other the English language will have suffered a loss.

~~~
kazinator
"to comprise" is distinct from "to be composed of", because the latter is
actually "to be", with a past participial phrasal verb.

"to be comprised of", on the other hand, is not distinct from "to be composed
of".

~~~
ashark
> "to comprise" is distinct from "to be composed of", because the latter is
> actually "to be", with a past participial phrasal verb.

This is like writing that the company "Apple" is distinct from "John Deer"
because one name consists of one word and the other of two, in that it's both
true and beside the point.

I don't think that fact had escaped anyone, and they are distinct for more
reasons than one being a verb and the other being a verb phrase.

> "to be comprised of", on the other hand, is not distinct from "to be
> composed of".

The people choosing the former over the latter—to whom we are clearly
deferring if we accept the spirit of your statement, which I take to be that
one may be replaced with the other in a sentence with exactly no modification
of meaning—seem to believe they are not quite the same. If I may venture a
guess: they think the former is a smarter or more formal but _otherwise_
perfectly identical version of the latter. Still, that is a difference not
without significance, and one I trust you did not intend to dismiss.

Further, they differ in a way that the people committing the (if I may) error
do not anticipate: to a good portion of those who understand how to use "to
comprise" in the ordinary fashion, its use in this manner is a sign of poor
writing, of the sort a well-intentioned but inexperienced high school student
might produce. This is the exact opposite of what is intended in the typical
case, I expect.

(Apologies in advance for any grammatical, word usage, or spelling mistakes I
have undoubtably made, to preempt posts about that.)

~~~
kazinator
Note that "to comprise" means both "to contain" and "to constitute". These
meanings are exact opposites.

~~~
ashark
A good point. I'd say it's more that the relationship expressed by the verb
may go either from subject to object or object to subject, depending on
context, and with a subtly different meaning depending on which direction it
goes. I certainly don't see it as its own antonym—either way, it means some
sort of inclusivity.

It's a really useful and economical word, which is why I'd hate to see it fall
(even farther) out of use owing to fears that it will confuse the "to be
comprised of" crowd.

------
cletus
Obligatory xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/1108/](http://xkcd.com/1108/)

Age old argument of whether grammar is prescriptive or descriptive [1]. Anyone
who has seen or read Shakespeare should be aware of how English has changed in
the last few hundred years. Go back 1000 years and Old English would be
utterly unintelligible to any modern English speaker.

Often I encounter people who get a bee in their bonnet about using nouns as
verbs or people who are too persnickety about "less" and "fewer". Or the New
York Times getting a bug up its posterior about "tweet" [2].

I find the effort some people, including the "comprised of" guy here, spend on
this kind of thing somewhat bizarre and a little sad.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription)

[2]: [http://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/the-
tweet-...](http://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/the-tweet-
debate/)

~~~
bweitzman
I'm of the ilk that grammar should for the most part be prescriptive while
dictionaries should be descriptive. And this is actually not a grammatical
problem but a semantic one.

"The book is composed of many pages" "The book is comprised of many pages"

If one of these is incorrect, it can only be because of the meaning of the
adjective phrase "comprised of". The actual structure of the sentence is fine.

In my opinion, I think either one is totally acceptable, as long as the
meaning is clear.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
Doesn't work in english which doesn't have a regular grammar in the same way
latin does

------
josu
The mistake:

>Although “comprise” is used primarily to mean “to include,” it is also often
stretched to mean “is made up of”—a meaning that some critics object to. The
most cautious route is to avoid using “of” after any form of “comprise” and
substitute “is composed of” in sentences like this: “Jimmy’s paper on Marxism
was composed entirely of sentences copied off the Marx Brothers Home Page.”

>There’s a lot of disagreement about the proper use of “comprise,” but most
authorities agree that the whole comprises the parts: “Our pets comprise one
dog, two cats, and a turtle.” The whole comes first, then “comprise” followed
by the parts. But there’s so much confusion surrounding the usage of this word
that it may be better to avoid it altogether.

[http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/comprised.html](http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/comprised.html)

------
c0ur7n3y
Language is comprised of rules that change over time. If everyone understands
a sentence, how can it be incorrect? I suppose I'm just confused by crusades
like this.

~~~
eggoa
You're right, of course, but it would be nice if "comprise" didn't have to
have two opposite meanings.

~~~
muxxa
"comprise" would be currently going through a transposition of meaning if
English was an oral language. This should be perfectly fine and English would
be the richer for it, i.e. we'd have a new useful way of 'aggrandizing a
sentence' (as he mentions as a negative in his 6,000 word essay). Instead the
'hero' of this article is contributing to the fossilization and stagnation of
the English language, making his case by appealing to etymology and notions of
logicity [1] and precision more suited to a formal grammar. He specifically
calls out its' novel usage (post 1970!) as being a negative.

I think his efforts are generally good, in so far as the phrase 'comprised of'
might be a good signal that a new wikipedia contributer is trying to
aggrandize their contributions over and above their knowledge, but I think he
is misguided in dictating how language aught to be used.

[1] made up word, perfectly understandable

~~~
logfromblammo
Oral language does not require as large of a vocabulary. You can color the
meaning of any spoken word by intonation and diction. If, for instance, you
chose to speak only the word "dude", you could probably still make yourself
understood to any native speaker.

As English lacks punctuation modifiers for altering the context and intent of
a written sentence, we accomplish that end through an expanded lexicon,
wherein several is more than a few and less than a buttload, despite each word
representing an unspecified quantity.

English is far more likely to invent a new word, filch one from another
tongue, or reuse a previously disused English word with a new sense or
different part of speech, than it is to recalibrate the ordering of synonyms
on a continuum of intent.

"Comprise" and "compose" are inverse terms. Using one when you mean the other
initially generates confusion, and subsequently destroys the language model
around composition. The whole comprises the parts, and the parts compose the
whole. Passive voice is an inverting structure, so the whole is composed by
the parts, and the parts are comprised by the whole. Include is a weaker form
of comprise, without the implication of completeness (except in legal writing,
where that implication is the default, and comprise is not generally used).
But as the inverse of include is exclude, inclusion is more about membership
in the set than about a level transition in the composition hierarchy. A
league comprises teams, and a team comprises players. Yet a league does not
comprise players; the league includes players. This is how we describe things
precisely and concisely.

Oral use is much more forgiving of misuse, as it has error-correcting code in
the form of context and intonation. Written use has a greater need for
correctness, especially when such use is read by many, any of whom may repeat
and propagate the error.

And I think parent post is incorrect. When you transpose or rotate the meaning
of a word onto the meaning of an existing word, English is poorer for it. Once
those meanings overlap, it is as difficult to separate them into different
shades of meaning as it is to unlock gimbals. Also, "aught" is the shortened
version of "naught", or zero, whereas "ought" is the synonym for "should" with
a greater implication that the actor is obligated to perform, but not quite to
the extent that he "must".

Logicity is perfectly cromulent, though someone should elucidate the
conditionals for when it would be preferacious to logicality.

------
gnu8
I went on this crusade once, and it was completely unrewarding. I failed
utterly to either stomp out the error I was targeting, or to piss anyone off.

The best way to enjoy Wikipedia is just to log out and read articles.

~~~
DanBC
What did you try to change?

------
jobu
Filing this away in my memory for future reference. It will be interesting to
see if one man can change the direction of a language, even in a small way.

Language is a fluid thing, and the phrase "comprised of" seems perfectly
natural to me (and probably most people). Once something like that happens
it's usually on the way to becoming grammatically correct, regardless of what
the current grammar rules state.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
'Correct' because people favor an irregular usage is a weak form of correct. I
favor the effort to try and keep the language regular. Following rules makes
it easier to learn and teach.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Something that bothers me is the recent (past few hundred years) effort by
(English speaking) humans to stop the development of the language. When did it
stop being okay for the language to evolve? Isn't part of the beauty of it
that it changes, that people use it differently, that words have new meanings?

~~~
bmelton
That assumes that evolution is always good. It isn't.

Consider the recent acceptance of the ironic usage of "literally" to mean
"figuratively". If it wins, there will no longer be as precise a word that
means only "literally", and the English language will have suffered a loss.

I am all for the evolution of language where it creates new words, adopts and
embraces portmanteaus, or embraces the use of easily intuited non-words into
the common parlance, but not every change is an improvement, and where a non-
improvement exists, it should be resisted.

~~~
tedunangst
Have we recently changed the definition of recent? You know how far back
_literally_ meaning _not literally_ goes, right?

~~~
bmelton
The Merriam Webser and Cambridge dictionaries began accepting the change as
canon circa 2013.

I consider that recent, especially given its long history of misuse.

~~~
pbh101
Perhaps Joe Biden being vice-president was the tipping point. He is an
egregious violator, using 'literally' to amplify how much he means
'figuratively.'

------
realusername
Sadly there is just no way to prevent a language to evolve, even with an
official language body. As a French speaker, they tried that with a very
conservative body which is deciding what is good and what is wrong (Académie
française).

The result is that the written language is now separated from the spoken
language and both evolved separately. (that's also why the vocal recognition
in French does not work well but that's another story). So the alternative is
much worse than just accepting that the language is changing.

------
leephillips
I have a lot of sympathy with this guy and his hopeless quest. But when he
says, "It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things", surely he knows
that never stopped anyone: [http://lee-
phillips.org/literallyEgregious/](http://lee-phillips.org/literallyEgregious/)

------
javajosh
_> Henderson was born in Olympia, Washington, the middle child of a father who
worked for the state government and a mother who taught math in middle
school..._

Is it just me or do other people have this curious fascination with the manner
in which reporters describe the obscure everyman subject? It's kind of a
unique thing, when you think about it, boiling down an entire _person_ to a
few superficial data points. It shares something with minimalist Eastern art,
you know, the sort that uses like two brush strokes to represent a lion. And
yet these reporter "brush strokes" inevitably seem far less descriptive than
the art, and far less expressive of the reporter's "artistic" intentions--it's
like there's an algorithm somewhere that generates these descriptions (perhaps
described in a handbook of reporter style?).

------
TillE
The article doesn't even properly explain the mistake. Though it's easy enough
to look it up in a dictionary and see that the "of" is superfluous.

~~~
bmmayer1
The user's wiki page does explain what is wrong with "comprised of":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Giraffedata/comprised_of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Giraffedata/comprised_of)

------
kazinator
This bizarrely obsessed gentleman is very wrong.

The alleged mistake is exemplified in the article like this:

> _The Wikipedia editorial community is comprised of many interesting people._

Supposedly, this should be "composed of" or "made up of".

However, that is incorrect. The verb "comprise" is simply being turned into a
passive form according to an established pattern which generalizes over many,
many English verbs:

    
    
        subject verb+tense object
        -->
        object "to be"+tense verb+pp preposition subject
    

For instance:

    
    
        A eats B       ->   B is eaten by A
    
        A includes B   ->   B is included by A
    
        A included B   ->   B was included by A
    
        A had included B -> B had been included by A
    
        A makes up B   ->   B is made up of A (composed)
                       ->   B is made up by A (invented, tidied)
    

Under this transformation, the preposition has to be suitably chosen to match
the verb. It is related to its semantics. For instance "of" doesn't go with
"include". And the "make up" example shows that multiple prepositions are
possible, depending on the semantics.

To insist that we may not apply this pattern to "comprise" is a very bad case
of prescriptivism. It's right up there with insisting that a diaeresis be used
in writing words like cooperation, that sentences may not end with
prepositions, or that infinitives may not be split.

 _Here is the real issue:_

In modern English, "to comprise" has two meanings which are _opposite_! It
means both "to constitute" (be a part of some whole: to make up) and "to
contain" (be a whole, containing something else: to be made up of). The
passive construction "to be comprised of" applies to only one of these
meanings. It does not work with the "contain" meaning, regardless of what
preposition is chosen. For instance:

    
    
        This country comprises twenty states. (contains)
    
        * Twenty states are comprised {of, by} this country.
    

Whereas:

    
    
        Twenty states comprise this country. (constitute)
    
        This country is comprised of twenty states.
    

We cannot indiscriminately wage editorial war on "comprised of" based on the
assumption "comprised" always means "contains"! "The Wikipedia editorial
community is comprised of many interesting people" is simply the passive form
of "many interesting people comprise (constitute, not contain!) the Wikipedia
community".

~~~
dragonwriter
If we applied the pattern to "to comprise" (which means, roughly, "to made up
of exclusively"), then the sentence would be something like "Many interesting
people are comprised by the Wikipedia editorial community" because the "A
_active verb_ B" form is "The Wikipedia editorial community comprises many
interesting people", so the "B _passive construction + preposition_ A" form
would have to be "Many interesting people <appropriate form of "to be">
comprised <appropriate preposition> the Wikipedia editorial community".

~~~
kazinator
I am not seeing the exact issue you're trying to explain, but let me attempt
to write a correct sentence, and its passive reversal (allegedly incorrect):

"Interesting people comprise the majority of the Wikipedia editorial
community."

"The majority of the Wikipedia editorial community is comprised of interesting
people."

Note that, in modern usage, "to comprise" has two meanings: "to constitute"
and "to be composed of". These meanings are opposite!

That is the reason for the contention. The "be comprised of" reversal only
works for one of the meanings.

~~~
Chinjut
The problem dragonwriter was moving towards pointing out is that, for example,
if the active voice version of a sentence is "John eats food", then the
passive voice version would be "Food is eaten by John", not "Food is eaten of
John". In the same way, active voice "Interesting people comprise the majority
of the Wikipedia editorial community" would have passive voice analogue "The
majority of the Wikipedia editorial community is comprised by interesting
people", not "The majority of the Wikipedia editorial community is comprised
of interesting people".

You claim that "B is made up of A" is a passive form of "A makes up B", the
preposition being chosen to match the semantics. I think this is incorrect.
The preposition used to introduce the agent in a passive construction is
always "by"; "B is made up of A" is not the passive form of "A makes up B",
but rather, the passive form of "__ makes up B of A" with agent omitted.
Analogously, "The soup is made with love" is not the passive form of "Love
makes the soup" but rather the passive form of "__ makes the soup with love".

(More examples: "Cereal is eaten with milk" is not the passive form of "Milk
eats cereal", but rather, the passive form of "__ eats cereal with milk". "Tea
is drunk at noon" corresponds to "__ drinks tea at noon", not "Noon drinks
tea", and "Tea is drunk in the kitchen" corresponds to "__ drinks tea in the
kitchen", not "The kitchen drinks tea". And, for examples using "of": "John
was relieved of duty" is not the passive form of "Duty relieved John", but
rather the passive form of "__ relieved John of duty", and "Lance was stripped
of his medals" is not the passive form of "His medals stripped Lance", but
rather the passive form of "__ stripped Lance of his medals". "The dreidel was
made out of clay" is not the passive form of "Clay made the dreidel", but
rather the passive form of "__ made the dreidel out of clay", just as "The
dreidel was made out of clay by me" is the passive form of "I made the dreidel
out of clay". Etc., etc.)

I would say this scuttles your claim that what is going on here is simply an
active to passive voice switch, even though I think I am of a different
mindset than dragonwriter as to the acceptability of the construction of
interest (I'm perfectly fine with all the ways people find themselves
naturally using "comprise", as I am in general a staunch descriptivist. I just
happen to also think you've mis-described the syntax of the English passive
voice construction.).

~~~
kazinator
This topic tires me -> I'm tired of this topic. :)

------
DanBC
I feel sorry for this editor now that these edits are known.

It'll be interesting to see if their edits start attracting reverts and
discussion.

Perhaps someone with skills could do before and after charts of edits that
stick and exits that got reverted?

------
Aoyagi
Yeah, well, I keep removing apostrophes from (most) plurals. It's a plague.
Except I'm not proficient enough to make any software that could help me, so I
do that only when I happen to stumble upon it, heh.

------
jongraehl
Let's leave aside the current crop of folks who're still reclining in the easy
insight of "there is no objective truth".

If you don't want to seem like an idiot, then don't write like an idiot just
because recent descriptivist dictionaries were pleased to take note of the
increasingly widespread misuse. You will be judged and you won't always have
time to explain your principled write-like-an-idiot stance.

Unless you couldn't care less how you come off, because you already care the
minimum possible amount.

------
josefresco
Am I the only one extremely bothered by the "By hand, manually. No tools!"
line?

Read the article, tools everywhere!

"He begins by running a software program that he wrote himself"... "he used
Google to find the 15,000 or so instances of the phrase"

Surely in the very, very beginning he was doing it "manually" but it seems
he's built his own tools, and is blurring the lines between bot/human.

------
gayprogrammer
We need a GNU Grammar Compiler for the entire English language. Then all we
need to ask is, "Does it compile?"

------
carlob
This looks very similar to a question I asked yesterday about enthuse :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8985364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8985364)

------
PaulHoule
It is pretty funny that if squash "it's" to "its" 100% of the time you get
superhuman performance compared to average people.

------
bartozone
If Webster added an additional meaning of comprised to actually make this
phrase grammatically correct, I wonder if his world would fall apart? ...

------
jorjordandan
reminded of the brilliant David Foster Wallace essay "Tense Present" which is
THE BEST

[http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html](http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html)

------
js2
Why doesn't the wikipedia have a style guide to address language issues such
as this?

------
raldi
Are we looking at the next winner of the Ig Nobel prize for literature?

------
NoMoreNicksLeft
Legally, he should be permitted to beat people with a crowbar if they protest
his edits.

------
bbarn
On the one hand, it's dedication. On the other, it looks a little like
Aspergers or something on the Autism Spectrum. The man is so strict in a
routine that he wears the exact same clothes and follows the exact same
schedule every day. He's obsessed with an incredibly minor detail to the point
of making a life commitment to change it.

------
learnstats2
One Man's Quest to ensure that his way is the only way. This illustrates a
serious problem with Wikipedia.

It does not allow diversity of thought or opinion - here, it doesn't even
allow natural evolution of language over time - if a "wikignome" has decided
something is canonical for Wikipedia, then it is. No argument.

No matter how many people believe this is now acceptable usage, one person -
typically one white man - has the right to _sanction_ every single one of
them.

We are supposed to tell wikignomes that their work is valued
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiGnome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiGnome)).
But I don't think this work should be valued.

~~~
abandonliberty
Encyclopedias should be information, not opinion. Reality isn't democratic.
Mind you an article such as the one on global warming or the global warming
controversy does address the diversity of thought or opinion.

However, there is no good place to store controversy around the meta-structure
of wikipedia: the grammar and phrases we use. Perhaps what we are missing is
an article discussing the use of "comprised of".

There is an argument, both illustrated in the article and some comments here -
and both those who argue for pedantry and laisez-faire have valid points.

~~~
DanBC
Village Pump or Manual of Style would be the normal places for meta discussion
of mass changes of "comprised of". If the editing is problematic it goes to
ANI and then amybe RFC and eventually Arbcom.

Edit: and some Wikipedians really do like talking about this stuff. Look at
hyphen, minus, en-dash, and em-dash for an example of discussions spread out
over several article talk pages, several meta spaces, with some Arbcom action.
There are easily 500,000 words just on different dashes.

