"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" that sounds more erudite, or something. I think to utilize something is to take something that is useless, and turn it into something useful. That's not the same as using the thing.
I know this is shocking to people but if a phrase is systematically used by native speakers, it is then part of the language. There is no notion of native speakers being systematically wrong in linguistics. It wouldn't make sense scientifically.
In order to examine natural languages using the scientific method, linguists gather data (i.e. native speakers' spoken or written communication) and then analyze this (i.e. find predictive models of this data). Gathering data, then claiming the data is wrong is epistemologically unfounded. Languages simply are the way they are. This would be like gathering data from Hubble and then deciding photons are wrong because their behavior mismatch with Newtonian laws.
OK, but does that mean the phrase should be used as such in an encyclopedia?
For instance, the word "biweekly" now means both "once every two weeks" and "twice per week". I don't mind usage of that word for those two meanings. Obviously, linguists can gather data and analyze how it's being used. They may conclude that one meaning was more favored 50 years ago and the other meaning is now.
But when I'm reading an encyclopedia, I'd prefer it to avoid this ambiguous word.
Your example doesn't map, though. There is no ambiguity when I say "curry is comprised of beans and carrots". It's just a way of using the word that some native speakers have used their whole lives and other native speakers find jarring.
As a non-native English speaker, the issue that I've had with the dual meaning of "comprise" is that I was first introduced to it via the "is comprised of" usage which resulted in me equating "comprised" with "composed" or "made up" As in: "X is comprised of Y and Z" == "X is composed of Y and Z" == "X is made up of Y and Z"
Some time later, I came across the usage "X comprises Y and Z" and, based on my previous understanding that "comprise" == "compose," I took that to mean "X composes Y and Z" which, in other words, means "Y and Z are made up of X". But really, it means the other way around which is that "X is made up of Y and Z!" Only when I learned about the dual meaning of "comprise" did I correctly understand it to mean the latter.
To this day, I still have to actively juggle this arbitrary "dual-rule" in my head when I come across "comprise."
Does “utilize” really lead to such ambiguities? Or “comprised of”? I’d be really surprised… maybe in rare cases? I haven’t read the entire linked manifesto so maybe he has some examples!
Biweekly (and probably semi-weekly) is one of those words that should be generally avoided. It's like depending on some less obvious operator precedence rule rather than parentheses. You may be technically correct, but you shouldn't do it that way because others will misunderstand you.
ADDED: I'm genuinely confused why people would disagree with this (which is in multiple style guides). I assume it's some variant of I know what it really means and, if someone else doesn't, that's their problem. But that seems antithetical to writing to communicate something to an audience.
Yes, comprised/utilize doesn't really matter because you will know from context, but biweekly is really tricky. For example "we have biweekly sprint ceremonies on monday and friday" can be very confusing.
There is a tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism, and it has to do with the rate at which the language evolves. Prescriptivism resists language evolution. Decriptivism allows the language to evolve as fast as people wish to evolve it.
Some rate of language change has to be accepted, but it needn't be as fast as if we rejected all prescriptivism.
We each prescribe or refuse to prescribe language rules as we see fit, and thus the language evolves at some natural rate.
> Decriptivism allows the language to evolve as fast as people wish to evolve it.
More importantly, taken to an extreme, descriptivism describes language in the way a map describes the territory. Any time a person speaks and is understood, no matter how badly, end-stage descriptivism has to allow their diction as syntactically and semantically valid in the language in which they spoke. The most you can say is that some expressions are rarer than others (you see "was done well" much more often than you see "was done good").
But this is also a wrong way of talking about language, just as much the old prescriptivist way was wrong. People are not static language replication machines, learning how to speak purely from imitation of their elders and community, and observed from on high by language anthropologists seeking to observe how they behave. They are concept-builders, rule-learners. They have a sense for not just how to speak in particular cases, but also what it is to speak well. It is this public sense of correct speech that is the subject of evolution over time, and is therefore also the proper target for descriptivist accounts of language.
Writing is similar to speech, but in writing most people are even more keyed to correctness, and less keyed to achieving the bare minimum of communication. Rules are stickier. We ought to understand this Wikipedia editor not as a noxious outsider to the evolution of language, who like the anthropologist inserts prescriptivist rules where they are unwanted, but as someone who is part of the normal evolution of language itself and therefore part of the terrain to be described! There have always been people who have been sticklers for particular rules.
In principle prescriptivism is about slowing language evolution, but in practice almost all of the prescriptive rules that people talk about (including opposing “comprised of”) are not based in any historical usage pattern. The prohibitions on ending a sentence with a preposition, “less” before a count noun, etc. are all made up out of thin air.
> 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.
> Prescriptivism resists language evolution. Decriptivism allows the language to evolve as fast as people wish to evolve it.
This is nonsense. Do you really believe language is subject to intentional human control?
(Of course if a dictator comes and kills half a million people for things including changing language like it happened in my country, then it is, but this is a very rare exception.)
> Do you really believe language is subject to intentional human control?
Some, yes. You speak roughly the same language(s) as your parents, friends, teachers, etc. Their influence on how you speak and write -especially when you were young- is quite large.
But you and I can -by our own choices- resist some evolutions of the language and foster others. We can be anywhere from pedantic prescriptivists to outrageously innovative and everything in between. Our children, relatives, friends, and colleagues can all take cues from our stewardship of the language -- and vice versa.
Fully agree, same can be said about ever young generation’s slang.
What “bet”, “cap”, “rizz” and others used by the younger population isn’t wrong, it’s different and an evolution of certain terms.
I don’t study linguistics, but I can be sure there are terms we use today and take as normal-speak that were once the center of a younger generation’s slang vernacular.
An extreme example is the word retard. Years ago in normal speak you could say “After the EPA enacted stricter emissions regulations, this initially retarded the development of sports cars until new technology was implemented” other obvious examples are the medical angle of the word.
Today, you could use the word in such a way, it’s technically correct, however you’ll most likely get some odd looks.
Most uses of it today are either in specific comedic circles, or derogatorily towards another person/thing/animal etc
"Better ones are better" is meaningless because there's no objective standard. What I think is better, you may think is worse. All we can say about style guides is, "different ones are different". They reflect the needs of each publication. And Wikipedia's style guide takes no stance in this case. Also, style is about preference, not correctness.
It may not be your personal preferred usage, but it certainly isn't bad usage if a major American dictionary approves.
That's nonsense, not all native speakers have equal verbal fluency. Certainly new words or sentence constructions can be coined for amusement or efficiency and may catch on at scale, but if there were no such thing as correctness then there wouldn't be any such concept as incoherence.
A "systematic" change in the meaning of a word or phrase means that someone used it wrong once and enough people followed them in their wrongness that it became the norm. It's reasonable to say that once a new meaning has been taken up by the majority in this way it's not wrong anymore, but there is also a broad continuum between old usages and majority uptake of new usages where some users of the language in question may reasonably object to the latter.
For instance, I was once CC'd on an email thread at work where a senior leader made an obvious typo in reference to some Thing and everybody else on the thread blindly parroted it. This "alternate" usage was established and used systematically in the local context, but it led to a significant decline in general clarity and interpretability, and it was also not durable beyond the context of that thread. It was a mistake, simple as that.
"Comprised of" is probably past the threshold at this point, much like "rate of speed" and "how <thing> looks like" and so on and so forth. But—and I know this is shocking to some people—"correct" use of language does have significant advantages for communicating clearly, especially in writing. Prescriptivism and descriptivism both have their adherents because neither is right or wrong in the naive absolutist sense—balance is key.
It depends on whether you presume language knowledge to be descriptive or prescriptive. Neither view is right or wrong. For example, I'm a native speaker of C, yet my syntax errors are still errors.
u are looking at this from the pov of a linguist, not an editor...u might think this comment im writing isnt "systematically wrong" or whatever but u wouldn't write a wikipedia article this way
seriously tho if descriptivists had the courage of their convictions they would just stop capitalizing, there's no reason to
I think you have the crux of it... this person has a very long essay explaining why this change makes it more comprehensible to more readers.
This is what an editor should do. What's the problem? Let them spend their time on it if they like, it seems like most times no one even notices the change.
It's not being pedantic if you are doing it to improve real life readability based on real feedback, even if it seems trivial.
Not necessarily true. There are authoritative guides on English (e.g. the Webster dictionary) that grammar is measured up against. In fact, the main reason we have standardized spelling instead of people just writing what seemed right is because people actively tried to enforce a right and wrong way of spelling.
> There are authoritative guides on English (e.g. the Webster dictionary)
This is exactly wrong. Webster's is not prescriptivist; a dictionary describes a language as it is, not as it "should" be (indeed, there is no such thing).
> It's not just that some people dislike it; it's simply wrong.
Language changes. Words frequently develop the opposite meaning of what they originally had—opposites seem to be semantically closer and more prone to switching than completely unrelated words. When a word changes meaning, it is not wrong to use it in the new way, and at some point it even becomes wrong to use it in the original way: if you used "terrific" to mean "inspiring terror", you would confuse most of your audience!
In this particular case what I find funny is that the author acknowledges that this semantic shift has been going on for hundreds of years and all that was holding it back was the language purists. According to their own account, when the purists fell out of favor in the 60s it was like a dam burst.
The "incorrect" usage recently overtook the correct one in published books:
Semantic shift is certainly a phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that it should always be embraced or is useful. There's a clear use for unambiguous and Technical language.
If you write a patent, statement of work, product specification, or contract with the wrong word out of ignorance, you only have yourself to blame
I'm fine with people being careful in their usage in contexts where precision matters. I even agree that Wikipedia is probably one of those places.
It's the weird value judgements that people like the author assign to different usages that really bother me. Objectively, "is comprised of" is correct usage. It's the majority usage in books published today, and it's in all the dictionaries.
If TFA had left it at "it's ambiguous" I wouldn't blink, but they had to go off on a rant about how wrong the modern usage is, and that's a problem. It feels elitist and reactionary.
I generally agree with that sentiment. And something like a patent the definition is well understood.
The sentiment that I disagree with is defending an incorrect or at least ambiguous word choice when there is a clear alternative. The strikes me as simple stubbornness.
> Words frequently develop the opposite meaning of what they originally had
My favourite examples, because it also emphasizes some kind of ambiguity in the concept itself, are the english words "host", "hosting", "hospitality", "hostile", "hostage", with roots in the latin "hostis" (enemy), and the indo-european "ghosti" (guest, stranger).
I don't know if it's that simple, and in the case of "comprised of" I think there's good reason to attempt to make a correction. It's not that to comprise is some super common, popular verb that pops up naturally in our day-to-day language. It's relatively rare. My personal opinion is that people believe what they'd probably say normally ("x is made up of y", or "x contains ys" or whatever) sounds too simple in some contexts, so they reach for the the verb they heard some other people use that they presume is more correct and then use it incorrectly. People are conflict-averse and don't often correct their friends/colleagues/clients/whatever so it sticks around. So if the intent is to use a more correct word, surely people would want to know the actually correct way it's used?
And I'm all for "language evolves" - but there's always going to be a time when you correct people. If you have a kid who calls the ambulance the "ambliance" (common one for kids where I'm from) you don't just shrug and say "language evolves", you try to teach them the correct way to speak, spell and write.
I don't know where the line is - what should be corrected and what should be absorbed in to English - but I feel like "comprised of" should be corrected.
You're welcome to tend your own garden, but until we figure out how to have fair elections I would invite all self-appointed language stewards to leave other people's plots alone.
Languages belong to their speakers, and the only way we have to vote at the moment is with our idiolect.
That makes as much sense as saying that "ne... pas" in French is a double negative and therefore "simply wrong" to use as a straight negative.
No -- language isn't math, and English and other languages are chock-full of inconsistencies and seemingly "illogical" things. Language ultimately rests on convention, on real life usage -- not logic. Arguing that a common usage is illogical is fighting against the tide.
"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" at the school sports day; but it's significant that if you try to correct incorrect usage, you get referred to literary figures such as poets and playwrights that used some term incorrectly, as if people like (e.g.) Pepys are authorities.
> It's absurd that English speakers are so tolerant of incorrect usage.
Or, one can just as easily say it's absurd that certain pedants are so intolerant of evolving usage.
Language does not proceed by logical deduction. It is shared convention, no more and no less. If a majority of people think a new usage is right, then that's just what the usage is.
When you say "incorrect usage", incorrect according to whom? You? A minority? Why should anyone else take that seriously when they're already communicating just fine?
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 how often I used "ne ... pas" instead of just "pas", e.g. "c'est pas grave" [1] rather than "ce n'est pas grave".
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.
I'm not a native speaker, but I've read that "je ne [verb]" was the standard way to negate in Old French, cognate with e.g. "yo no [verb]" in Spanish. The "pas" was originally only added for emphasis, but over time it became obligatory and the "ne" became less important.
It's almost as if, contrary to what the person three comments up says, languages evolve over time...
> 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.
Isn't it common to drop the "ne" in colloquial speech?
“Common” is an understatement. It’s practically universal. You will sound weird if you systematically include “ne”, like you learned to speak by reading books and have never communicated with a real person.
> 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.
You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Please learn French before spouting off so confidently about it.
Interesting. If you look at Wiktionary or if you prefer, your favorite etymology dictionary, the word utilize is descended from Latin from the French word utiliser, via the Italian utilizzare which got it from the Latin utilis. All of those words mean to use.
I'd be the last person to say you're wrong. Matters of grammar and usage ultimately boil down to does it feel right and current usage. As is usual with these things, other people have different feelings about it. That's what dialect is I think.
No part of your example indicated the intent was to use the computers to teach children. Teachers can teach adults and they can use computers to do other things. In your examples, excepting your hidden intent, they were synonyms. Do you have a better example demonstrating this?
Nevertheless, "use" is a better word. Using longer words, when shorter words are available that mean the same thing, comes across as pompous or pretentious.
They're not quite the same thing. One example I see online is using "utilize" to suggest that something is used beyond its intended purpose. (I'm not sure I even completely buy that.) But, in general, "use" is shorter and sounds less jargony.
Not entirely. Consists of (without a modifier like "in part") usually strongly implies completeness or functional completeness ("active ingredients") in the subsequent list, comprises is more free to be incomplete.
Also native speaker: I'd say a closer translation would be "this post is based on many good points". Or "founded on".
I don't know how universal this is (I don't see anyone else making similar points yet..), but I use all three phrases because at least in my head they have subtle differences:
* "Comprised of" means the pieces make the whole, or at least the basis for the whole, and are an important part of it.
* "Composed of" drops the "important part of it" from "comprised of".
* "Consists of" is even broader, not only including "parts that make the whole" but also "a unit that can be broken into parts".
The differences aren't always relevant, but meaning is lost if they're treated as the same thing.
Edit: Found two further down on this page who each made one of my points, but not all three, so at least I'm not alone here.
The post isn't making anything, it's just sitting there being read by us. The author, however, made some good points in the post.
Additionally the verb to comprise isn't suitable here either, so it's going to sound awkward no matter how you try to rearrange the sentence. The "composed of" or "consists of" alternatives mentioned in the original page aren't really a good fit either.
There's no need to complicate things: this post contains many good points.
In truth if someone said or wrote any of these sentences, I wouldn't mind whatsoever. I know exactly what they meant and that's what matters. However since we're having a bit of fun, I figured I'd weigh in :)
"This post is comprised of good points" is probably technically grammatical but it's an awful sentence. "This post made good points" works better. Better still would be getting more specific.
"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?
That's my point. If you just look at phrases as meaning the sum of their words then this phrase makes no sense. But it is a phrase that has an understood meaning.
> I think there is a proper use for the verb "utilize": it means "to render useful".
I've never heard of that usage for utilize in my life. In a cursory search, I see that the definition of utilize is "to make use of", which to me sounds the same as "use".
Native, high-level speaker here: "comprised of" is not wrong. You're entitled to your tastes of course, but you'll have a richer understanding of the world if you include the shades in your model.
Thank you for taking a stand against the ever-encroaching scourge of "utilize." That one bugs me almost as much as "in order to" does. (Just say "to"!)
“in order to” and “to” have different shades of meaning, and sometimes different meanings entirely (although I guess you’re right that most instances of the first can be replaced by the second).
The Romanian for "to use" is "a utiliza." Bilingual speakers might find "utilize" more familiar and choose it as such. The same might be true of other languages, and a possible explanation for its popularity.
I agree with you. Frankly, utilize instead of use just sounds finicking. As an engineer, I'd use it in a corporate powerpoint that I make to impress management. These kind of things have no place in Wikipedia.
The (expected) face-value meaning of "comprised of" is usually best substituted by "part of": All Gaul comprises three parts -> Three parts are comprised of all Gaul.
No, I know, I'm saying that the expected, compositional, interpretation of the phrase (a) exists and (b) is just a slightly archaic passive, and it would still be perfectly cromulent, just backward.
Passive voice is formed with the word ‘by’ not ‘of’.
The verb ‘to comprise of’ can exist and have a different meaning that ‘to comprise’ or its passive ‘to be comprised by’ - and have a different passive (to be comprised of).
Like, the verbs ‘smell’ and ‘smell of’ do not mean the same thing, nor is one the passive of the other.
- I smell roses
- roses are smelled by me
- I smell of roses
- roses are smelled of by me
Hey there, when you are quoting and ending a sentence, you should place the period inside the quotes. I understand if you are new to writing in the English language.
WP for "Wikipedia" is built into the site; most of the internal guidance pages can be accessed via titles such as "WP:WikiProject".
[Edit] I generally don't use such acronyms without spelling the term out in full first. But spelling things out in full every time comes across as wordy and pedantic.
Thanks for the clarification. I wouldn't argue against abbreviations per se. Was just in the mood for a whimsy post.
And, in defense of WP, W would not be a better option really, except for URLs.
Ironically, my locale's WP edition has failed to or didn't want to adopt /w/ instead of /wiki/ as the leading path segment for Wikipedia articles, as opposed to the English edition.
Also, thinking about this makes me want to search for edit wars and discussion about US vs British spelling on Wikipedia.
It's the port in your Wifi over Data box, that hackers can connect their wireless Wifi cable extender to, so you can consummate all the exoteric phonography that the information highway is compromised of.
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" that sounds more erudite, or something. I think to utilize something is to take something that is useless, and turn it into something useful. That's not the same as using the thing.