And to support your stance against that, I offer this:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their...
They can take "cleave" from my cold, dead hands!
But in my language we only use the original positive meaning, so I was deeply confused by English using it for a long time.
> Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.
When it's your own house you're going to, you could argue the definite article wouldn't add anything, and the phrasal verb to go home drops it (ie. I'm going home), though adding an article is possible and changes the meaning (I'm going to the/a home, in the context of a home for the elderly or some such).
In this case "compose" and "comprise" do have different meanings. "Compose" has the sense of "put together" whereas "comprise" is closer to "contain". You'd never say "contained of" unless you were going for a really archaic sentence construction. I think it's less clear that "comprised of" is incorrect in all cases, but I do agree it sounds ugly and that there's almost always going to be a better phrasing available.
"I'm going house" contains less meaning than "I'm going to [a] house". Without the preposition, it could mean "I'm leaving [a] house" ("I'm going from house").
"My itinerary is comPOSED of four hotel stays."
or
"My itinerary coNSISTS of four hotel stays."
Much better.
If the context or dialogue goes like this: "Where are you staying for your vacation?" then the logical subject of the answer should come first, e.g. "I am staying ..."
However if the lead-in focuses more on the itinerary rather than the traveler, e.g.
"What is your plan? Can you describe your itinerary?" then it makes a lot of sense to start with "My itinerary involves..." or "My itinerary consists of..." or for a passive voice, "My itinerary is composed of..."
"Consists of" creates a minimum bound, not an exact amount.
For that matter, meaning was already lost in the original post: If "comprised of" was used in the original sentence, it would mean at least one of the hotels was a destination itself rather than just a place to stay (a historic building or something, for example).
To make your “comprised” example correct, I guess it would have to be something like “the alphabet is comprised of five vowels, twenty consonants, and Y, which can be either.”
(Note: Wikipedia lists W as also sometimes a vowel now?)
This is an OK sentence, probably because the alphabet is not very complicated. But we’re basically stuck describing the whole thing in one sentence because of the use of “comprised.”
If we’d gone with “contains,” we’d have more flexibility, we could break it down and do one component per sentence, for example.
It isn’t always wrong, it just makes a lot of decisions for you and they aren’t always optimal.
At least I, as a non-native speaker, find the edited sentences always easier to read. They simply make the text better.
As the entire point od Wikipedia is to make knowledge accessible with co-writing, I find it just wild that people would object to better language.
So who exactly is imposing their preference on the world: the one making the text easier to read, or the one objecting to the edits?
People can horribly misuse the phrase "comprised of". Bland articles that directly communicate the language can be more or less tasteful depending upon who is reading them. Almost assuredly sentences can be written without "comprised of" that are also definitely not bland.
But classifying something you find easier to read as better language for everyone doesn't make it immediately true for everyone.
Additionally, it's not about a person making text easier to read or not from one (or multiple peoples') perspectives -- this appears to be about someone going on a stylistic crusade en masse. Objecting to the edits being an act of 'imposing their preference on the world' feels similar to the political mirror-projection kind of argument that can happen.
I think there is interesting discussion to be had (is it better? are there good ways to use it? when/where/how? what is the ethicality of editing articles like this? is a disclaimer wiki entry enough? etc etc), and maybe we can focus on that.
I think that phrase is always incorrect. I suspect the problem is that people aren't used to words that take a list as their direct argument, like "comprise".
Wikipedia leans heavily to descriptivism (as do nearly all lexicons, these days). So there's no incorrect usage; there's only usage that jars, for some people.
I don't go around telling people they're ignorant because they can't speak their mother-tongue properly. That would simply be rude. But English text intended for publication should be correct English; it shouldn't be garbled, whether because it's written by a non-native speaker, or a native speaker who isn't well-read.
That implies that there is such a thing as "correct English". This seems obvious to me, but that's exactly what descriptivists deny.
Let's not get into whether "literally" is a synonym for "figuratively".
What seems like perfect English to you is not perfect to everyone.
Disagree. The language I speak didn't exist 800 years ago. The Anglo-saxons wouldn't have understood me, and I wouldn't have understood them.
And there were barely a billion human beings just 800 years ago - forget about thousands of years.
I didn't mention "prescriptivism", althpough it's obviously the opposite of descriptivism.
I thiink you mistake "prescriptivism" for a sort of law-making,like grammar-nazis. I mean something more like a general acceptance that words do have particular meanings, and that it's possible to be wrong about the meaning or use of a word.
I also wouldn't base your opinions of what makes for good English on the ramblings of one Wikipedian whose primary argument seems to be that they had to work hard to learn to use the word a particular way and so everyone else should for the rest of time.
1. Non-native speakers lack the competence necessary to make such pronouncements.
It’s false to deny that many non-native speakers acquire near-native competence. So if we think that ordinary native speakers have the right to pronounce on these questions, at least some particularly skilled non-native speakers should too. Perhaps the claim then is that there’s a high standard that only a few native speakers and no non-native speakers reach. It’s unclear what would motivate that view; given that language is something we all use, it is doubtful that e.g. the perspicacity of a particular construction should only be commented upon by the most skilled speakers.
2. Native speakers’ claims to influence languages should have priority over those of non-native speakers.
We might simply view this as obvious, in which case there’s something of a conflict of interest. I think the more plausible argument is grounded in the use of language. Someone who never uses French will not really have particularly important opinions on its use. The problem here is that it’s unclear why native speakers’ intuitions are really more important. The English language is surely just as important to a Nigerian civil servant who operates nearly entirely in English as it is to one in Whitehall. The difference between non-native speakers and native speakers don’t seem relevant unless we take being a native speaker per se to be of import.
They said "find the edited sentences always easier to read" and that's valuable regardless if you're a native speaker or not. Of course, what "better language" is as subjective as "clean code" so probably won't reach any consensus there.
But all of this is highly subjective in the end, so everyone's opinion is equally worth, native speaker or not.
> I find it just wild that people would object to better language.
They're either saying that their own sense of what is more legible is enough to define what is better, or they're buying into the pedantic arguments in TFA.
As to what is easier to read, I think the English Wikipedia should be written to be legible to native English speakers. This is better for everyone: native English speakers can read their Wikipedia, and English learners get exposed to actual English usage rather than a simplified version.
In this case, it's not obvious to me that any substantial portion of the English-speaking population sincerely gets confused by "comprised of". It feels much more like the insistence on not ending sentences in prepositions: a rule for the sake of having a rule.
EDIT: In fact, "comprised of" recently overtook "comprises" in published books:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22comprised+o...
Side note, there is an actual "simplified english" wikipedia. So even early learners who want a simplified resource have one aside from regular Wikipedia. https://simple.wikipedia.org/
It was a 30 second runaway comment and the latter part clearly doesn't hold up against scrutiny.
That subjectivity doesn’t equate to the equal worth of all opinions. It just means that no one opinion can be considered universal.
That lack of universality doesn’t mean that picking any one direction is as good as picking any other.
If I strongly prefer a Victorian style, giving my preference equal weight is likely to make the content far less valuable, because my preference is not a common one.
It would be necessary to examine the goals of the content: the audience it is intended for, the desired effect on that audience, the nuances lost by preferring audience B over Audience A, the impact of that loss, etc.
Everyone should be allowed to have a preference, absolutely, but applying individual preferences to content does not lead to equivalent outcomes.
Also, considering that plenty of non-native English speakers read the English Wikipedia, there is plenty of value in the English writing in the English Wikipedia being maximally clear without sacrificing the intended meaning of the text. Dismissing feedback out of hand on the basis of "well the person giving the feedback ain't a native English speaker" misses the point of Wikipedia being a resource for everyone.
Broadening this beyond Wikipedia, the English language itself "is comprised of" countless words and grammatical structures yanked straight out of other languages, often by non-native speakers importing features of their native languages for all sorts of reasons. Knowing this history, I hereby authorize non-native speakers to critique the language and elements thereof; it's just as much their language as it is mine, and they therefore have just as much a right to it as I do.
What tiny fraction of one percent of the edits would you estimate you have actually read?
The author says this "The 9th district is comprised of all of Centerville" should be replaced by "The 9th district comprises all of Centerville"? That's it?
Is there some way to see what edits were made?
"As Polish speaker, I say leave out"?
Well, yes, but other words aren’t wrong and irritating to many readers. The point is that the usage in question has several disadvantages, but zero redeeming features.
> "To comprise" and "to be comprised of" contain the same word, but not in the same sense.
That’s not the point. “To shoot” and “to be shot” contain the same word, but mean opposite things, but that’s a well understood result of active vs passive voice, and nobody objects to that. However, imagine some people would start using “to be shot” to mean “to shoot”. So, they’d say “Peter was shot by Paul” to mean that Peter shot Paul, that is, Paul was shot by Peter. And then the dictionary would add that as a secondary meaning. Can’t you see how people might object to that?
Encyclopedias are a good place to make as few assumptions and gambles as possible with regard to how a reader might comprehend what is written.
First you dust the cake, then you dust the table.
The castle is impregnable.
And if you add more collocial words, wicked now is good, but also means bad. When a song is cool, you mean it's hot.
People tend to not object to that.
(Ross, Act 4, Scene 3, Macbeth)
"Inflammable" is taught to be avoided.
So are things that mean opposite things depending on locale, like "tabling" an issue. It may be ok within a local group, but would be avoided in writing inside a multinational corporation.
Everything is objected to, that’s not sufficient for a decision. It’s the reason or volume of objecting.
Just saying there’s some objection is the Twitter fallacy. It could be one person, or even me, or it could be 100% of editors.
There probably ain't much we can realistically do about that, though. Words get misused until they're redefined all the time ("literally" being the popular contemporary example). Such are the joys of English being descriptivist.
the ministry of truth is easier to write as minitrue, yeah.
Auto-antonyms are actually quite common in English.
By fixing a common mistake on a collaboratively edited encyclopedia? What are you even talking about? Do you have any idea what an editor does at the New York Times?
But it’s an accepted usage of the words.
I’m not exactly familiar with specific editorial duties, but it seems NYTimes editors allow “comprised of” [0] so they don’t seem to correct all occurrences of “comprised of” by changing text to “composed of.”
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22comprised+of%22+site%3Any...
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 correct? Nonsense.
The job of an editor is to raise the level of the writing before it goes to print, including fixing common mistakes. A professional writer would just learn something from it and improve. What I'm amazed by is the number of people who seem outraged, like someone's right to freedom of expression is being violated because someone came along after and removed some mistakes and improved the writing, literally a Wikipedia editor just doing the job of an editor. And then a whole essay has to be written justifying it, and that's still not enough, and we are all discussing it even further. It's a remarkable phenomenon.
It makes me wonder if software developers are as defensive about common programming mistakes. If so we might have a bit of a problem.
This is a terrible argument first because etymology is not meaning, but more importantly because "grasp together" doesn't seem to rule out the errant meaning. "This table setting grasps together a plate, a cup, and several pieces of silverware." seems if anything less wrong than "A plate, a cup, and several pieces of flatware grasp together this table setting."
Well, ok, but we are not criticizing use of "comprise" but of "comprised of".
This table setting grasps together [three things].
This table setting comprises three things.
This table setting [together grasps] three things.
These are all correct.
*This table setting is grasped of a plate, cup, and flatware.
*This table setting is comprised of a plate, cup and flatware.
*This is grasped-together of a plate, cup, and flatware.
These are all wrong, for the same reason (so it can't be the Oxford comma).
If you wouldn't say it out loud with "comprised of" replaced by "included of", then it's wrong. That's the simple rule.
The backwards version is "The plate, cup, and flatware is comprised of the place setting" means "The plate, cup, and flatware is the total-grasping-together of the place setting."
It becomes clear if you write it this way how awkward it is, and the preposition clearly seems like the wrong one, so this is why the standard advice is just to avoid this confused, clunky phrasing.
You talk a lot here, but none of it actually follows. People write "is comprised of" because they confused it with "is composed of". "Com-pose" means "place together"; doing the same things does not make clear which should be which way 'round.
For the record, I kinda like having a separate word for "makes up" versus "is made up of" and would prefer people stop confusing the two. I just don't think we need garbage arguments in support.
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.
>The author could have just written "I don't like 'comprised of', and I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, even though the term has been part of standard contemporary English for a long time."
But they are not imposing their preference. They are making an improvement that has a consensus and the edit is appreciated by the authors of the text and Wikipedia editors.
Look at the "Reaction to the project" and the barn star awards they got. People whose text was edited to remove "comprised of" thanked this person for their work. Only 1% of the time the edit was reverted. Their work is overwhelmingly viewed as a good thing for Wikipedia.
"Standard English" is a poor choice of words, but I'm not sure how to describe what "I go house" is. Not grammatically correct English?
I love wikis and knowledge bases but this is exactly the kind of stuff that detracts.
On one case, who cares what this person does with their time.
On the other case, it wastes the attention of 90k authors who need to figure out whether they care and have their writing style overridden by a rando.
I think the correct way to do this is to appeal to a writing style that gets argued over (sometimes perpetually) and when settled then the 90k edits can be made. This edit would be an argument presented to change the style guide.
Since “comprised of” is proper usage I doubt it would be proscribed in the style guide.
In my org I used to waste minutes of having writings where people expressed preferences for “and” vs “&” or Oxford comma or whether data are plural and edited things back and forth. Then I just found a style guide and adopted it and ask that people not revert changes based on preferences that break the style guide.
On the other hand, if you're editing wikipedia and you expect your writing to not be subject to rando edits, you won't last long.
I wonder if the editor read "1984" and straight up copied its ideas. In the novel, the totalitarian state of Oceania uses that exact same justification to promote the use of the Newspeak language:
> After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? ... Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not.
Maybe George Orwell copied the idea from Esperanto. For instance, "dark" in Esperanto is "notlight", and left is "notright".
Similarly for "notlight" implying including twilight, which "dark" does not.
Perhaps that is lightandnotlight. We almost have notlight in English: unlit. An unlit room feels twilighty to me.
> notright
Left in Esperanto: maldekstra
I can’t imagine why a language designer would choose “mal” as the prefix for “not”. In English and Spanish (two common languages), mal has some bad connotations (malodour, malady, malfeasance, malo, malformed). Let’s try the opposite: “not left” is definitely something different from “right” - urrrgggh. “Do not go left” doesn’t mean to go right.
However it looks like Esperanto also has “liva”. Turnu liven tuj post la angulo ~= Turn left immediately after the corner.
Well, there's also the Latin word "sinister" which has a very different meaning in English... Kinda seems like a common theme.
“maldekstra” doesn't actually mean “not right” — mal in Esperanto more precisely means “opposite.” Left is opposite of right, and so malmaldekstra (opposite of the opposite of right) is still right (dekstra).
“Not right” in Esperanto doesn't exactly mean left, either, just like in in English. That'd be ne + dekstra = nedesktra.
http://www.anmal.uma.es/Numero9/Forment.htm
Joan Bastardas habla de la extrañeza de la existencia de la palabra ensinistrar del catalán, puesto que tiene un significado claramente positivo a pesar de ser derivado de siniestro-a. «... ensinistrar que no deixa de sorprendre els qui s´acosten al català des d´altres llengües romàniques, en què les idees d´habilitat i aptesa s´associen amb la mà dreta i no amb la mà esquerra, el castellà adiestrar, l´italià addestrare; en francès hi ha dexterité, però també en català hi ha destresa i destre-a 'hàbil', 'expert', i també maldestre, com el francès maladroit». (Bastardas 1996: 26)
la contraposición entre la bondad y la justicia — simbolizados por la derecha — y la maldad, el egoísmo —relacionados con la izquierda—.If you wanted to be understood, it'd be better to say maldekstren though. I'd never heard of liv-, English Wiktionary lists it as "neologism, nonstandard" and Reta Vortaro as "malofte" (infrequent).
The most confoundingly powerful feature of language is ambiguity: on one hand, you can't take it literally; on the other hand, you don't have to.
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 my perspective, your position is much closer to the Newspeak ethos than that of someone who actually cares about correct usage.
I've answered your question, now I have one for you: Did you even glance at the link?
I'm sorry, these epistemologically relativist arguments lead to utterly absurd conclusions. How does wikipedia work at all? How can we ever make judgements about anything?
It's bad Cartesianism. Just because we can't know something absolutely doesn't mean we can't know anything. Just because language changes doesn't mean there's no such thing as correct and incorrect usage.
That also doesn't mean "anything goes" either, obviously, since we do clearly speak a mutually comprehensible dialect through no intentional coordination. It's an interesting subject! You could stand to have some curiosity about its actual mechanics, there's a lot to be learned that is invisible to you if you've already decided how it should work.
I could engage your other points, but why bother
> 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 disagree with Orwell, fine, just don't trot him out in support of your points. Which was my original point.
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.
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.
That's what language is. That's how language works.
I love Orwell, but he was flat wrong in that essay. He was playing at being a linguist and showing his ignorance.
Dictionaries generally explicitly do not define what is correct, they describe what is in use (often with notes about the contexts of common use).
> style guides
Style guides do not define what is correct for the language, they define what is correct for those adopting the style, they are intentionally by design more limited than what is acceptable in the language to serve, for adopting institutions, the function of providing a common style (that’s why they are called style guides, rather than language guides.)
He introduced American spelling and American English.
By constrast the Oxford English Dictionary was created by lexicographers intent on mapping the usage of English across space and time, they created multiple entries for each form | usage of root words and added copious notes (in the full multi volume OED editions) regarding first usage, alternate spellings, regional changes, etc.
The OED is a descriptive dictionary.
Yes, he was.
And while some of his reforms caught on and remain in use to this day, his approach to dictionaries generally did not. When I said dictionaries do not do that, the verb tense was significant.
Webster lived 200 years ago, and today prescriptivism is rejected by the overwhelming majority of linguists, because it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what language is. Prescriptivism is about as well supported as phrenology, and shares many of its discriminatory goals. It was something people made up, that turned out to not make any actual sense, and that was subsequently abandoned by almost everyone.
Webster can instruct people on how to correctly write "Webster Language". But he cannot instruct people on how to correctly write English. English is whatever its users say and write. No other sensible definition exists.
I sure haven't stated "my position" in any of my previous comments. But assuming it refers to common english, I'm reminded of another "1984" concept: doublethink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
Compare this:
> common english is Newspeak
with this:
> War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength
The similarity is uncanny.
> A better source might be
... the actual book being discussed?
> https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Exactly which part of Orwell's opinion did you find relevant to this discussion and how does it relate to yours? This is missing from your comment.
> which is essentially what you and others argue for,
Please don't put words in my or anyone else's mouth to make your point. It's extremely disrespectful.
> 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"?
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 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.
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.
Why people think they're entitled to their own ignorance is quite beyond me.
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.
You're misreading me: I'm saying that English didn't come into existence by fiat, and that it doesn't evolve through fiat most of the time. English, being a natural language as opposed to a constructed one, evolves naturally.
> 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?
That doesn't change the fact they're descriptive. It also doesn't change the fact linguistics is descriptive.
> 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.
Well, you can get a degree in linguistics and learn what "descriptivism" actually means, then, because you certainly don't know it now.
You seem to be arguing that descriptivism is just what linguistics "does", therefore it does not inherently contradict prescriptivism? Because they have two separate roles. And if descriptivists stayed in their lane, and allowed prescription where obviously necessary (like when teaching a language) then we wouldn't be having this argument in the first place.
But if descriptivists turn around and say "therefore thou shalt not prescribe"، then we do have a problem, and descriptivists are indeed naive, they are the real prescribers of an ill-conceived political program.
For an example in the other direction, wikipedia should ban the word inflammable. Its original meaning, which some authors will definitely prefer (if they are pedants), is entirely the opposite meaning of the colloquial meaning. Should wikipedia pick a meaning for the word, which people are free to ignore, or just outright ban it? (except in etymology wikipedia, where it is an example of a word, rather than part of the explanatory grammar)
* 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 Z," I think Y and Z are the only parts of X
This might have originally been a misuse of the word "comprise" to mean "compose," but I feel like that's a pretty big distinction in meaning.
I've never found this a convincing argument. Think of when you use a dictionary: it's because you want to understand a word that you don't understand in its context. If it didn't include all uses, the dictionary wouldn't help you. A dictionary a tool to help consume language.
If you want help to produce language, you refer to a style guide. The barrier for acceptability is much higher there.
Another point: the era of a human doing rote language cleanup is nearly over; surely an LLM can do better?
but also, i agree. i don't like it either. so i'm not sure the whole essay is necessary, but i appreciate the work this person is doing to remove the bad writing from wikipedia.
> 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 information is in the noun. Just leave them out, right? "I go house."
> It's illogical for a word to mean two opposite things.
"To comprise" and "to be comprised of" contain the same word, but not in the same sense.
> The etymology of the word does not support "comprised of".
That's irrelevant to the current meaning of the word. This is called an "etymological fallacy"[1].
> It's new. Many current Wikipedia readers were taught to write at a time when not one respectable dictionary endorsed "comprised of" in any way. It was barely ever used before 1970.
Good luck reading Wikipedia, or any newspaper article, if you are uncomfortable with language coined during the past half-century. What exactly is that "Internet" thing people keep talking about? Note that "The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionaries regard the form comprised of as standard English usage."[2]
The author could have just written "I don't like 'comprised of', and I'm going to impose my preference on everyone else, even though the term has been part of standard contemporary English for a long time."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprised_of