Talk:Comprised of/Archive 1

Not quite ready for prime time
About this version:

"''Comprised of is an expression in English grammar to denote association between two entities."

It's hardly an expression. Whatever it is, I'm puzzled to see that it's "in English grammar". It doesn't denote this. The notion the editors are looking for is "two arguments", or "bivalency".

"''The use of the conjunction has been controversial and in dispute."

I can't think of any definition of "conjunction" that would cover "comprised of".

"Grammarian Bonnie Trenga states that 'comprises' does not need any other words to make sense, giving the example 'A full pack comprises 52 cards.'"

I thought she was a copyeditor. And this use of "comprises" does require at least one word for each of its two complements (its subject and object).

"American lexicographer Bryan A. Garner has written that this phrase is always wrong and should be replaced by either 'is composed of' or 'comprises'."

When the hapless Garner pronounces about English usage, alarm bells should go off. Oh, and while "of poop" is a phrase, and "comprised of poop" is a phrase, "comprised of" is not a phrase.

"Similarly, the authors of The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation state that the phrase 'comprised of' is never correct because the word 'comprise' by itself already means 'composed of'.[5]"

Again, I hope they don't call it a phrase. And consider:


 * 1) "Aside from Giraffedata, nobody was much interested in this until recently."
 * 2) "Giraffedata aside, nobody was much interested in this until recently."
 * 3) "Aside from in the first sentence is wrong, because in the second sentence the word aside by itself means apart."

Er, no. And therefore the argument attributed to the Blue Book is risible.

"In 2015, many media outlets reported on a Wikipedia editor that manually removed instances of the phrase 'comprised of' from the encyclopedia."

This is very true. It's also idiomatic English. (I'd write "who" rather than "that" myself, but this is a matter of taste. This probably won't stop some prescriptivist from telling you it's WRONG, though.)

I'm not at all sure that this merits an article; but if it does, this at World Wide Words would be a good place to start. -- Hoary (talk) 02:08, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
 * +1. And "consists of" is a valid alternative, too. Tony   (talk)  02:57, 9 February 2015 (UTC)


 * PS a couple of clarifications. First, in some analyses, "comprised of poop" may not be a phrase. But even if it isn't, it's a constituent; whereas "comprised of" isn't a constituent and certainly isn't a phrase. I suppose "phrase" might be said to mean something like "uninterrupted string of words", but this isn't how it's understood in the contemporary study of grammar. Secondly, I don't mean to say that Garner is always wrong. Often he's right. But he's so often wrong that his arguments (if any) for pronouncing that this or that is undesirable or wrong should be considered on their merits; the pronouncements shouldn't be believed merely because he said them. -- Hoary (talk) 04:11, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
 * PPS and a third. "Comprised of" can be called an expression. (Why should it not be? What could I have been thinking?) -- Hoary (talk) 01:01, 11 February 2015 (UTC)


 * - the day after I created this draft, I thought, "No, this is a bad idea" and went to put db-self on it, and only didn't because another editor had touched it. It's been expanded far beyond my capabilities. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  14:21, 13 February 2015 (UTC)


 * , I seem to have been in a particularly grumpy mood when I wrote some of the above; please don't take it so seriously. &para; I'm still not sure I should have bothered with this article, but I think that the result does have some minor amusing aspects. -- Hoary (talk) 14:32, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

OED
I'm increasingly sure that this shouldn't be an article; but anyone who seriously thinks that it should be really ought to cite the OED. This of course shows English as it is used; it isn't judgmental. However, it does fairly often point out that a particular usage is disparaged: as an example, here's the first entry for disinterested: "1. Without interest or concern; not interested, unconcerned. (Often regarded as a loose use.)"

Let's try the OED for comprise (behind a paywall, but accessible in most well-funded libraries). "Comprised of" appears under sense 8 (chronologically arranged, of course), "Of things", use 8 c: "pass. To be composed of, to consist of." There's no further explanation or commentary, just four examples, from 1874 to 1970. So it's been used for at least 140 years, and any disparagement of it by others has remained beneath the notice of the editors of the OED.

Of course 140 years is not particularly young or old for a usage. But it's mildly interesting to view this together with the first sentence by Giraffedata himself within his celebrated essay (in the version in which I saw it a few minutes ago):


 * I have edited thousands of articles so they do not contain the phrase "comprised of". Edit summaries for those edits usually refer to this page.

(My emphasis.) In "edit summaries", edit is a noun. The OED is unable to present an example of this noun from before 1960. -- Hoary (talk) 03:24, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * An article should definitely point to the disparagement of this item. Tony   (talk)  10:30, 10 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Michael Quinion points us to an example from 1823, half a century earlier than the OED manages (in an entry that doesn't seem to have been recently revised). We can see the example in context here; the context obnoxiously racist material, though of course racism is irrelevant to idiomaticity. -- Hoary (talk) 01:01, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Category of "comprised" in "comprised of"
Geoffrey K. Pullum, as quoted by Michael Quinion, argues that in "comprised of", "comprised" is an adjective. (The conversion of past participles into adjectives is of course common in English.)

Note to those who haven't boned up on their grammar: in "comprised of poop", "poop" is a noun phrase (as well of course as being a noun), "of poop" is a preposition phrase, "comprised of poop" is an adjective phrase, and "comprised of" isn't even a constituent so it can't be a phrase, though you could call it an expression or an idiom. (For the point that an idiom needn't be a constituent, see Huddleston and Pullum, A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, pp. 146–147.) -- Hoary (talk) 01:01, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (pp. 78-79) draws a distinction between (A) past participle forms of verbs and (B) participial adjectives, and presents three tests for distinguishing between the two. Two of these three are irrelevant here. (One of the two is that verbs can take predicative complements and indirect objects whereas adjectives cannot. The other is that adjectives can be modified by too or very whereas verbs cannot: for comprised, these two adverbs are ruled out semantically.) The third is that AdjP but not a VP can be the complement of verbs such as seem, appear, look and remain. Thus *The boss seemed considered of bias, with verbal "considered", is ungrammatical; whereas The picture seemed distorted with adjectival "distorted", is grammatical.

Well, let's google: (My emphasis in each, of course.)
 * "as the entire exposed face (between elevations 1125 and 1275) appears comprised of Orinda formation materials" (source)
 * "Laemmli and collaborators showed that chromosomes appeared comprised of loops of ~90 kbp in size" (source)
 * "since the working class seemed comprised of more dysgenics and had very limited resources to offer a healthy environment even for eugenically normal offspring" (source)
 * "we see in the emergence of the livability discourse not a top-down imposition but a subtler anointment process that builds an audience for models of how urban space should look comprised of people who have the cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984) to be heard and seen" (source)
 * "robots and animals will remain comprised of vastly different components for the foreseeable future" (source)

On p. 544, CGEL provides a short but not exhaustive list of adjectives that take PPs headed by "of" as their complements; these include "afraid" and "aware" but the only participial adjective is "convinced". Another would be "enamo(u)red". (I wonder if any language pundit has decreed that because *"She enamors (of) him" is ungrammatical, "He is enamored of her" is also ungrammatical.) '' .... added at 02:03, 12 February 2015‎ by User:Hoary'' Minor clarification made: Hoary (talk) 02:37, 13 February 2015 (UTC) More very minor clarifications made Hoary (talk) 07:35, 17 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Annoyed by the invitation to consult a book of 1800+ pages to consider the diagnostic tests? You'll find five tests mentioned in McIntyre's paper. The test I refer to above is his (1c): "Selection by AP-selecting verbs: It {seemed/remained/became} very damaged". McIntyre's additional tests are his (1b) and (1d): (1b) (treated elsewhere in CGEL) is irrelevant here as comprised doesn't start with un; (1d) (exemplified by "The book is inexpensive and comprised of newly commissioned papers", adjective inexpensive being successfully coordinated with AdjP "comprised of...") shows that comprised is an adjective (or in McIntyre's terminology "has adjectival status"). -- Hoary (talk) 02:37, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Google Books mysteries
The draft sends people to Google Books, When I click on two of these links, I'm told: "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book." But I have never viewed the book. -- Hoary (talk) 07:16, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The comment above referred to the CliffsNotes book and the book by Garner. A few days ago, multiple attempts all failed. But today I could see both on the first attempt. -- Hoary (talk) 07:49, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

"Comprised of" in patents (and US law)
Somebody commenting on Mark Liberman's post draws our attention to "Comprised of counterfeit", a fascinating (if for the non-legal mind somewhat abstruse) discussion of "comprised of" in patents. -- Hoary (talk) 07:16, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Well ... legal writing is typically ignorant, isn't it? Tony   (talk)  09:15, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The language in patents is no example to be used for the spoken and written language in all other contexts. In patent language, one says "obverse" and "reverse" instead of "front" and "back". Many other examples obtain. Leave ungainly patent langaueg out of this, please. Rainbow-five (talk) 23:31, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't quite know how to deal with comments such as these, and even start to think that smileys and the like have their uses.

Personally, I too find much legal language repellent. But my personal tastes are irrelevant to an article, even one about wording.

Legal language is typically the reverse of ignorant. Though fallible and often boring, lawyers are experts in wording to avoid misunderstanding and challenges: they're far better informed on wording for their purposes than most of us are on wording for ours (let alone theirs). Wikipedia does not and must not purport to give advice, and it's no business of Wikipedia to provide its readers with models that should either be emulated or avoided. (Those who regret this are free to set up "WikiEnglishUsage" or whatever.) If patent language seems to be of encyclopedic value here, then it should be dealt with here: its alleged (or even acknowledged) ungainliness would be a complete irrelevance.

Yes, if published comments about the precision, ungainliness, etc of legal wording are themselves encyclopedic, then of course they too may be tossed into the article. But neither your tastes nor mine should shape this article. -- Hoary (talk) 04:57, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

"Disparagement needs to be foregrounded"
"Disparagement needs to be foregrounded", sez User:Tony1. I suppose so, as after all there's nothing much else that's of interest here. Just why is it that a number of language busybodies make a big deal of this particular string? (Has any of them given a reason that at least looks sound?) -- Hoary (talk) 09:46, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Who ignores and who doesn't

 *  Certain usage guides warn their readers about the meaning of comprise – typically ignoring the appearance within respected dictionaries of the use they deprecate – but do not mention "comprise of". 

In case somebody wants to recast this: The Economist and Times guides either are ignorant or feign ignorance; by contrast, Gowers/Fraser know what they're talking about. -- Hoary (talk) 10:23, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Fowler

 * As an example, H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937).

"1937" is no mistake: the copy that I happen to possess describes itself as most recently corrected in 1937. (I imagine that the corrections and revisions would have been minor: Fowler was already dead.) Later editions of this book are very different; whatever their merits, what they say can't be ascribed to Fowler alone. -- Hoary (talk) 02:02, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

"This argument, though, is easily countered"

 * This argument, though, is easily countered if we think of to comprise as an exact synonym of to contain. While the active character of the above-quoted example of to compose becomes a passive one in the logical adjective form composed [of], that is not the case with to comprise; because if we want to preserve the meaning of the verb to comprise as "a larger unit containing smaller ones", its potential adjectival form comprised of is nonsensical, as much as containing of is nonsensical. Instead, the ing-form comprising is required, which is synonymous to containing and thus requires no "of".

I'm about to remove this. Here's why: But more broadly, I can't make head or tail of this, no matter how well intended it might be. -- Hoary (talk) 01:57, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * "If we think of" is vague. If it means "If we bear in mind that", then its premise is wrong. If on the other hand it means "If we imagine that", then this should be clearly stated.
 * It's not clear whether this talks in terms of contain, compose, or both. (If this is a thought experiment, then I don't understand it.)
 * Whether a clause is active or passive is a syntactic fact; "active character" is meaningless.
 * I've no idea what "logical adjective form" means. I do have access to morphology textbooks; where is this mentioned? Google has two other instances of the string, but neither looks as if it should be taken seriously.
 * "Comprised of" is not a "potential adjectival form", because "[WORD] of" is not a potential adjectival form. "[WORD] of [WORD]" is potentially an adjective phrase, and "composed of nonsense" is indeed an adjective phrase. ("Comprised of" isn't even a constituent.)

Prologue
After stripping markup, we read:


 * The argument opposes those who go back to the etymologically correct meaning of the verb "to comprise", to those who point to the modified and by now widespread use of it in conjunction with "of", even if it is based on an original misunderstanding of its meaning. Etymologically the verb harks back to the Latin comprehendere, which comprises the prefix com (with, together) and the verb prehendere (to to catch hold of, seize), together creating the meaning of "clasping together", or simply "to contain" or "to include".[1][2] In this line of thinking, even seen as an adjective, the meaning of "comprised" is closest to "containing" or "including", and like those too, it does not require the preposition "of".


 * It is a fact that language is a living phenomenon and the difference between a "mistake" and a "new meanings of a word" commonly resides in the way the new meaning manages to become dominant and finally makes it into the dictionaries, or is abandoned as a faulty evolution. In the case of comprise vs. comprise of, the battle is still ongoing and the tensions are unusually high for a grammar dispute.

I understand that this is well-intended; but I am about to remove it, and here's why.

The first paragraph is somewhat confused. It's partly about the "etymologically correct meaning" of the verb, understood in terms of Latin comprehendere. This is understandable; but I have yet to see, and the article has yet to mention, any argument that cites the Latin word. The sources cited in this paragraph are better than nothing, but they are extremely feeble when compared with the OED, which makes it very clear that comprise had a complex set of meanings before it more or less settled down to what is today its dominant meaning. (Unfortunately I do not have access to the OED right now; I'll regain it soon.) Yes, today's use of "comprised of" traduces Latin comprehendere, but then so does today's mainstream use of "comprises": but neither of these matter until it can be shown that there has been an appeal to the (original) etymology. (Really, though, the prescriptivists who are worth encyclopedic consideration would not be so utterly wrongheaded.)

I don't know what the second paragraph is about. There's no "battle" between verb comprise and adjective comprised, as nobody using the latter has anything against the former. (As far as I know. If I'm wrong, please add this to the article.) There doesn't seem to be one among lexicographers, because just about all of today's dictionaries include constructions with "comprised of". (However, I'm willing to believe that some respected dictionaries do not, and look forward to the mention of these within the article.)

For the reasons above, I'm about to remove this material. I understand that it was added in good faith, but it's so problematic that I can't see how to fix it. -- Hoary (talk) 02:46, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

One-man-crusade & its counterpart
Hoary, hi.

Look, the page as it was when I first saw it yesterday looked like a one-man-crusade, or more precisely: your counter-crusade against Brian H.'s. A long and dreary sausage of pro arguments which nobody in his right mind (which obviously excludes me :-) ) would go through, first and foremost because it looked like smb.'s shadow-boxing: there was hardly any mention of the counter-arguments!!! Nor was the issue at hand explained in the intro!!!! I did my bit to fix these 3 grave problems: formulate the issue, give the page some structure WITHOUT removing anything, and present, let's call it, the "Brian" arguments. You chose to remove two of those fixes. A loss for the page, and not because I had anything to do with it, but because it leaves the page again without an honest heading (YES, you as much as anyone know THERE IS A DISPUTE here), and lacking the opposite side of the dispute. That's very poor. I have no problem with editors countering arguments they disagree with, removing repetitions, fixing inaccuracies of vocabulary or formulation. Removal of entire blocs which had a good reason to be there, even if you totally disagree with their content, on - please let's admit it - pedantic reasons, goes against any logic - commonsensical one, as well as WP logic.

I'm not a "language professional", which includes me in a category comprising :-) 99,99% of the WP users, and the USERS are the ONLY RAISON D'ETRE for WP. I'm obviously not an English native speaker either, but have some academic credentials and don't need to hide too much in such matters. If I call a conflict a conflict, and keep a sentence short to make it comprehensible, and use common language instead of overloading it with fancy terminology, this can only be a bonus, not a reason for you to dismiss it off-hand, no matter how politely you package your commentary of that removal - in form, not in substance. If you choose to do that, something is wrong. Having the last word is not always the proof of being right, you know. For all I'm concerned, my contribution ENDS HERE, please do consider me out of this discussion entirely. Even if this doesn't proof me being right either, of course; I just don't have the time for more of it.

I do appreciate people with a cause, big or small, so I do wish you all the best, and I mean it.Arminden (talk) 09:04, 14 February 2015 (UTC)Arminden

PS: To avoid misunderstandings: mentioning of others "disparaging" the use of the expression, and simply listing several of them, w/o presenting their arguments a) in a short form in the intro, and b) in more detail under a paragraph devoted only to this purpose, while the pro argument is presented as self-understood and in no real need of being questioned, is simply insufficient and looks like window-dressing. Or shadow-boxing, as I said before.Arminden (talk) 09:36, 14 February 2015 (UTC)Arminden


 * Thank you for writing, Arminden. You raise a lot of points, so this reply must be rather long.


 * The man spells his name Bryan.


 * I'm not aware that I had added "pro arguments".


 * I regret that my writing is dreary.


 * Forgive me if I misread you, but the impression that I get is that you think all that's significant is that there is a dispute over "comprised of". By contrast, I think that there is a minor dispute over whether "comprised of" should be deprecated. A lot of people clearly think that it should be. Judging by the number of its occurrences all over the place, a lot of people seem not to think this. However, I'm not aware of any campaign for "comprised of". The most I've encountered is some poohpoohing of the attempts to deprecate it. I suggest that only a minority of people give much thought to it, and that this minority is for the most part split into two groups: those who don't like it, and those who are puzzled by the other group. (Have you heard of any campaign to increase its use?)


 * But yes, I'll concede that there's some disagreement over it. If there's a disagreement of encyclopedic significance, then, in order to enlighten its readers, an encyclopedia should, I believe, state clearly and dispassionately what it is that the disagreement is over. The Liancourt Rocks are of trivial significance to the world other than for the rights they confer to resources, and for national pride and xenophobia. But before the article on these rocks gets to the dispute, it tries hard to present the non- (or hardly) disputed facts. On a very much smaller and less emotionally charged scale, this is what I have attempted to do here. I hope that I've done this at least moderately well but may have failed. Other editors are welcome to improve what I've done and to criticize it.


 * What I am fairly sure about is that the most authoritative dictionary and reference grammar for English are, respectively, the Oxford English Dictionary (the huge one, oed.com) and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Of course neither work is infallible, but they seem good places to start. I've tried to understand and reflect what they say. Can you name more authoritative alternatives, or say how I have misrepresented either of these two?


 * I thought long and hard before making each of my two major deletions of your material. I didn't relish either deletion. I explained both above on this talk page, and also alerted you on your user talk page. Please tell me where I have misrepresented you, been perversely pedantic, etc.


 * The bit about "language professionals" is not mine; it's Tony1's. When I first saw the term, I thought it meant speech therapist, translator, or similar; but this didn't make sense. Before questioning Tony, I thought of linking the term. Sure enough, the link turned blue: there's an article about it. It seems to mean a writer for hire (or copywriter, or ghostwriter) or similar. If this is correct, then I too am not a "language professional" (although I have been in the past).


 * It is not obvious that you are not a native speaker of English. Your written English is excellent. And even if it weren't, this would be by the way.


 * We are talking here about language. We all use language. We all have and use minds, too. But we don't rush to say "I have a mind and can use it, so enough of that fancy-pants psychology terminology." There may be very good reasons why psychologists need to use particular terminology. Getting back to language, I hesitated before using words such as "complement", but I decided (perhaps wrongly) that they were necessary. I realize that the man on the Clapham omnibus will be unfamiliar with "complement" in its linguistics sense; however, an understanding of the difference between complements and adjuncts is essential to an understanding of how language works, I linked to the term, and I do not apologize for using it. Other editors who have taken the trouble to understand the term are very welcome to second-guess me: to find a way of avoiding the term, to explain it more neatly, etc.


 * Yes, you are right: I have a cause: to describe and explain this matter as well as I can. I am sure that I make mistakes in this; and, as I have said, I look forward to others' cooperation and criticism.


 * Now let me quote you:


 * To avoid misunderstandings: mentioning of others "disparaging" the use of the expression, and simply listing several of them, w/o presenting their arguments a) in a short form in the intro, and b) in more detail under a paragraph devoted only to this purpose, while the pro argument is presented as self-understood and in no real need of being questioned,


 * I strongly reject this. Yes, I have put much more effort into (A) showing when "comprised of" has occurred, commenting on it syntactically, and commenting on it semantically, than into (B) writing about disparagement. (As for the part at the end about Giraffedata's campaign, I may have made slight changes to wording but I have done nothing more.) That's because the purely descriptive stuff (description of the expression, not description of the discussion of the expression) interests me more and requires some familiarity with linguistics concepts that I think I possess (though no doubt I make mistakes). Others are most welcome to add material to the other sections. Moreover, if you examine the history you will see that I have added criticisms -- by the ACS, by the American reviser of "Fowler", by Heffer, by Yagoda, and perhaps more. I am keen for the article to show what their arguments are, and am disappointed when (as often happens) they present none.


 * If the article is skewed, there's nothing necessarily wrong with this. This would be true even if it were the biography of a living person, which of course it isn't. I have this on the authority of the boss man himself, here (search within this for "Hoary"). If I do such things as misrepresent sources, this is indeed reprehensible. If on the other hand I stress one side but do so in a way that isn't itself problematic, then other editors can and probably will arrive and fill out the picture. -- Hoary (talk) 12:54, 14 February 2015 (UTC) slight rewording Hoary (talk) 07:51, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Disparagement by language professionals
Though the article currently starts:


 * Its use has been disparaged by language professionals

we don't cite any. Here's one who is most worked up about the matter. ("Comprised of is wrong. Always. Just don’t use it. It drives me crazy when I read it." Etc.) Shall we quote him? -- Hoary (talk) 15:20, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

What do you think, Tony1? -- Hoary (talk) 23:12, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * While I don't agree with the advice on clause-initial "however", and I don't like the way the advice on ", and" is framed, most of the other points are excellent; that includes "comprised of". It's suitable for citation, I think. Tony   (talk)  02:28, 15 February 2015 (UTC)


 * OK, it's in. (Ahem! I hope that the reason it's suitable is not just that his dislikes and preferences coincide with yours; rather, that his opinions seem fairly representative of the language professionals who are mentioned in the opening paragraph but then promptly forgotten.) -- Hoary (talk) 06:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

"Language professional" is an almost meaningless qualification, which spans the space from figures like Geoffrey Pullum and Mark Liberman -- eminent academic linguists -- to anyone who sets up shop as a free-lance copy-editor or posts a page describing herself as the "sentence sleuth." The very use of the phrase "language professionals" suggests a writer who is ignorant of these differences. The relevant qualification here should serious scholarly research on language or wide respect as an authority (e.g., Garner, Yagoda). It would also be helpful to readers to be told that no linguists have condemned the construction and that 65 percent of the American Heritage Usage Panel found the construction acceptable, which suggests that the condemnation is not warranted in the view of the majority of eminent writers and editors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ellencwaine (talk • contribs) 18:52, 22 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I must say that the term "language professional" baffled me when I first saw it; but I have never seen it applied to the likes of Pullum and Liberman, and the article language professional suggests that it's an established euphuism for writers-for-hire. &para; [N]o linguists have condemned the construction: I wouldn't be so sure. There are very many linguists, and we can therefore expect that there will be a fringe. Imaginably one subspecies goes around condemning this or that minor phenomenon of English, during leisure breaks from doing linguistics as we understand it. (And yes, Garner has wide respect as an authority: odd, isn't it?) -- Hoary (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Singaporean English
The article makes a note about Malaysian English. I don't think it's very important, but I do think it's worth saying.

I found it hard to believe that this feature of Malaysian English wouldn't also be apparent in Singaporean English. Sure enough, Google says I'm right. But I can't find a clear statement of this, and "Just look at all the Ghits!" is not an adequate reference. If anyone has access to a book about Singaporean English or can otherwise confirm this (or show that no I am wrong), please go ahead. -- Hoary (talk) 13:12, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Auto-antonymy
Some warnings about "BE comprised of" suggest the following rationale:
 * 1) "A is comprised of B" is, or should be, the passive equivalent of "B comprises A".
 * 2) But the intended meaning of "A is comprised of B" is not "B comprises A". Instead, it's "A comprises B".
 * 3) Therefore this "A is comprised of B" has the meaning of comprise inverted.
 * 4) Thus the people who use "is comprised of" either don't understand comprise or don't understand passivization.
 * 5) And so "is comprised of" shows ignorance, illogic or both.

Actually it is not a passive (see Comprised of), and the "inverted" meaning appears in the OED (see Comprised of). But let's not niggle here: let's instead accept for a moment that comprise has just one meaning that's relevant here and that use of "is comprised of" implies that this meaning is being inverted. What then?

English has a number of words that can mean either one thing or its opposite, yet little confusion arises. (Communication is not obviously damaged or imperilled.) Wikipedia calls these words auto-antonyms, but a better source than the Wikipedia article is "Words that are their own opposites". This is related to a number of other messages titled "Words that are their own opposites". A particularly interesting one, I think, is that by Richard Hudson about the word risk, here. -- Hoary (talk) 14:34, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

There's no reason to say that "comprise" is "auto-autonymous" in these constructions. Compare "She possesses great charm" and "she is possessed of great charm." Do you want to argue that "possess" has antithetical meanings in these sentences? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ellencwaine (talk • contribs) 18:54, 22 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Good observation: I hadn't thought of possess. Well, purely as a verb, comprise is auto-antonymous. And I submit that its uses are hardly any less comprehensible as a result. To say that a word used (even if only by ignoramuses) with the opposite of its commoner and indisputed meaning must somehow suffer as a result: no, perhaps surprisingly, this doesn't wash. -- Hoary (talk) 23:08, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

For the record, one might add also "descend," as in "She descends from royalty"/"She is descended from royalty" (in earlier periods "descended of") as well as "She avenged the insult to her honor"/"She was avenged of the insult to her honor." This seems to be a minor constructional alternation of English of long standing, and there is no reason to single out "comprise" for censure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ecwaine (talk • contribs) 18:06, 6 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Another good observation, Ecwaine. I have trouble thinking of such examples, though once you bring them to my attention I agree with you. -- Hoary (talk) 01:04, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Userbox
I've made this userbox to let users who deliberately use the phrase identify themselves:

·maunus · snunɐɯ· 00:12, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You may wish to post this or a similar message at Wikipedia talk:Comprised of. -- Hoary (talk) 08:04, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Maunus, this comprises of a joke, right? Tony   (talk)  08:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I am not possessed of a jocular spirit. no. My spirits are comprised only of schnapps and mead.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 15:10, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Mandarin Usage
I added citations for the construction from Anthony Trollope, Norman Mailer, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, Lionel Trilling, Christopher Hitchens, and Harold Bloom. It casts the objections to "comprised of" in a more heroic light: to upbraid the authors of Principia Mathematica for the illogicality of their writing is not for the faint of heart. .... added at 05:13, 11 April 2015 by Fennbury


 * These edits by User:Fennbury are surely well-intended and they are informative, but I wonder if the article really needs such a large number of examples. It also has (already had) a set of mostly older examples (see the section titled "Use"), plus examples from such writers as Simon Heffer. Perhaps some more of the examples could be relegated to references (as has already been done for Heffer). Very likely some of the newly added examples are more valuable/interesting/striking than some of those that have been here for some time. (I'm sure we all relish Trollope's "sudden erections".) -- Hoary (talk) 05:28, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello Hoary, Thank you for the edits, which are welcome (I do think 'notwithstanding' is logically more appropriate than 'despite', but its formality militates against it), and for fixing the links. I would argue, however, that the citations need to be included in their entirety, for three reasons. First, there's a good reason why usage writers from Fowler and Follett to Garner and the editors of the Webster's Dict of Eng Usage have included so many citations in full, even though the print medium attaches a higher cost to length. Readers deserve to be *shown* how important writers have used the word or construction at issue, rather than simply being told, "it appears in the work of so-and-so," etc. In this case, for example, seeing the examples from Trilling, Russell and Hitchens etc. forces the reader to ask whether he or she would really urge that one would "improve" the work of these writers by replacing "comprised of" with some other phrase -- or whether, in fact, there might be a certain presumption in doing so. Second, inasmuch as the article devotes around 4-500 words to the views of critics of the construction, among them not just Garner and some newspaper style guides but the "Sentence Sleuth" and Cliff Notes, it doesn't seem out of line to give half that space to the usage of the sorts of writers whose actual practice should be counted at least as authoritative as the views of the grammarians. (What does it even mean to contend that a construction used by all those writers is "wrong"?) A still greater disproportion would lead the reader to assume that the latter are more significant than the former. Finally, while the older examples are useful in establishing the history of the construction, the point at issue is really the acceptability of the phrase in contemporary usage, for which purposes the usage of modern "authors of reputation," in George Campbell's phrase, weighs a lot more than that of some nameless Victorians. So both sets of citations should be retained, but for different reasons.Fennbury (talk) 16:29, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the thoughtful response. I think it's a matter of method of presentation; and one reason for this is your seemingly dismissive reference to "some nameless Victorians". FFS, I thought, these are not "nameless"; they include not only well known writers but also the most celebrated edition of one of the most celebrated encyclopedias. But luckily, before erupting here about this (non-) issue, I thought I'd take a second look; and sure enough the names of the authors don't appear until one looks into the references.


 * It often seems to be assumed either that "comprised of" is avoided by writers whose work merits consideration, or that it has only recently emerged, or that it has only recently crept into the prose of the educated. Since it has instead been used for a long time, and by writers whose work merits consideration, I think you and I would agree that the article should show this. If it should show this, then we have to work out how best to do this. It's better to do this under "Use", and to avoid suggestions that the writers are/were outstandingly good (eg that they're "mandarin") or that they approve(d) of the construction: readers are welcome to infer this for themselves. I think that we now have rather too many examples, but this certainly doesn't mean that I'm particularly defensive about those that I happened to have found. And if the examples are presented carefully, perhaps their total number isn't excessive after all.


 * I don't necessarily think that the opinions of the "stylists" and "grammarians" are worth much. (For example, I don't think that The Elements of Style is worth the paper it's printed on.) But if "comprised of" is an issue at all, then what makes it so is this material. So if this article should exist at all (and I have mixed feelings on this), I think it should cite such sources generously.


 * Smaller points: Hitchens is a good writer, but I find this particular nugget peculiarly awkward. Just me? And in my own idiolect, replacing "notwithstanding" with "despite" doesn't even change nuance; it simply reduces by two syllables and thus streamlines. -- Hoary (talk) 00:01, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is a work for formal writing, so "notwithstanding" is fine. It's also less apt to be mistaken for some kind of cause–effect relationship indicator. "Despite" may be inferred by some to imply some kind of conscious resistance against the trend, as in "despite their best efforts ...", so is contraindicated here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:45, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

evolution of usage preferences
Isn't the deprecation of "comprise/d/s of" simply a (relatively modern) phenomenon springing from the facts that:
 * 1) comprise works perfectly well without an of, therefore with of it looks/sounds (to those who notice such things) tautological and clumsy, and
 * 2) there is more than one semantically identical (at least as far common usage is concerned) alternative ("composed", "constituted", etc) that need an "of"?

I reckon that this is where people who say that "comprised of" is wrong are coming from. Personally, I think - though I'm aware that probably millions of people do otherwise - that if a word (and it's the same with terms like "myriad of" and "off of") doesn't actually need an "of" then it sounds better (less clumsy & tautological) without it.

But aren't everyone's personal lexical preferences inevitably at least somewhat subjective?-- Ty rS  04:46, 4 August 2015 (UTC)  Very slightly tweaked -- Ty  rS  04:50, 4 August 2015 (UTC)  Further v slight tweak -- Ty  rS  04:52, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * When you say "tautological", I wonder if you mean "pleonastic"; if no you don't, then you've lost me in at least one place.


 * We can discuss the likely reasons for some people's claimed dislike of "comprised of", and the discussion could be interesting. But until we have sources for such a discussion, it's not what the talk page is for.


 * I do agree with at least one thing you say . . . but this isn't a BBS. -- Hoary (talk) 05:08, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Ha ha, certainly "pleonastic" may be very slightly more precise than "tautological", though of course most people would know what I meant (in the same way that we can easily work out what people who use "comprised of" mean). What I meant was "using unnecessary words", which, most dictionaries agree, and I'm sure you must be aware, is one of the senses of "tautological". I find it hard to believe that that would leave you (or any literate person) "lost".
 * The reason I wrote the above thoughts was that I agree with Arminden above that the sub-text and tone of the article make it read like a one-person reaction to another one-person crusade.
 * (I've never used a BBS, is that a place where no-one admits that their opinion is an opinion?)-- Ty rS  06:56, 4 August 2015 (UTC) slightly tweaked -- Ty  rS  09:42, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, sorry:


 * after posting my perhaps snappish message I reflected that I'm fairly free with my own opinions hereabouts, and therefore am hardly the right person to dissuade others from uttering theirs. (Of course I've nothing against opinions, but these talk pages are suppose to serve the articles directly.)
 * I find to my great surprise "tautology" has the meaning you ascribe to it and there's even a Wikipedia article on it. Well well, a gap in my vocabulary. More surprising as the article say's it's used by Fowler and years ago I was an assiduous reader of his Modern English Usage.


 * And so, hoping that discussion here will directly serve the article:


 * You talk of "the deprecation of 'comprise/d/s of'"; however, "comprise(s)/comprising of" is far less common than "comprised of" (which is rarely the preterite). No surprise here, if you accept that "comprised" in virtually all instances of "comprised of" is not a verb but an adjective. This is something that the article explains in the section on syntax. The explanation is heavily dependent on a quotation from Geoffrey K. Pullum, who, er ... tends to take a withering or two-fisted approach to descriptions of traditionalist grammariness [not Pullum's term, but meaning the phenomenon that is to descriptive grammar rather what truthiness is to truth]. However, the notion that what look like regular ed and ing forms of verbs are instead adjectives isn't at all novel. Also, I haven't seen any reliable source (linguist) arguing to the contrary. If any do, feel free to cite them.


 * You say "comprise works perfectly well without an of, therefore with of it looks/sounds (to those who notice such things) tautological and clumsy", but I think your premises are wrong here. Sorry if I appear pedantic, but I'd change it to "the verb comprise works perfectly well without an of, therefore with of the adjective comprised looks/sounds (to those who notice such things) tautological and clumsy". Perhaps, but if so then this is a reason to dump the adjective completely. Consider what (the article says) drives a certain writing consultant crazy: "Wrong: An office is comprised of desks, chairs, and computers. Right: An office comprises desks, chairs, and computers." If we want to use adjective/verb "comprised" here, then no alternative is grammatical (at least in my idiolect):
 * *"Desks, chairs, and computers are comprised by an office." (The verb comprise doesn't allow passivization.)
 * * "Desks, chairs, and computers are comprised of an office." (The adjective comprise doesn't have this meaning, or does so only very rarely.)
 * * "An office is comprised desks, chairs, and computers." (Its semantics aside, adjectival comprised licenses a preposition phrase headed by of. Unsurprisingly [for an adjective], it doesn't license a noun phrase.)
 * * "Desks, chairs, and computers are comprised an office." (Ditto.) [ Hoary (talk) 10:03, 4 August 2015; continues under the interjection]


 * I hope you can forgive me interjecting here but it's the only way I can remember and respond to all your points without repeating entire paragraphs. This may be very dense of me, but when you write "If we want to use adjective/verb "comprised" here, then no alternative is grammatical (at least in my idiolect)", I have to admit that at the moment I don't understand the need to use "comprised" when "composed" or "constituted" (and probably other synonyms that I'd have to look up) are (IMO) just as good? -- Ty rS  11:01, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't see any need for it myself. But this part of the discussion is descriptive (describing how people use "comprise(d of)"), not prescriptive (saying whether/how people should use "comprise(d of)". I don't think it helps to mix up the descriptive and the prescriptive. And by default, an encyclopedia is descriptive: it describes how London (for example) is, not how it should be. -- Hoary (talk) 23:01, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * You say "there is more than one semantically identical (at least as far common usage is concerned) alternative ('composed', 'constituted', etc) that need an 'of'" I think you're agreeing with the article here. See the bit about malapropism within the section on semantics.


 * This bit about malapropism too is dependent on Pullum. It's odd (at best) that this article is so dependent on a single linguist. But he's the only one I know of who has done much more than mention this (non-?) matter. A succession of more or less serious books deal with prescriptivism -- Thomas Lounsbury's The Standard of Usage in English (1908) is perhaps the best known -- but the only one I've encountered that mentions "comprised of" is Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style; and yes, it merely mentions it.


 * You say: "Personally, I think - though I'm aware that probably millions of people do otherwise - that if a word (and it's the same with terms like 'myriad of' and 'off of') doesn't actually need an 'of' then it sounds better [...] without it." I think that some people notice particular arguably omissible words, don't like them, and then cite this rule of thumb for getting rid of them -- a rule of thumb that they elsewhere don't apply. (Notice the "that" very near the start of the previous sentence? I could have omitted it. But I don't think I've ever met somebody who wants to get rid of such instances of "that".) You're right, though, that "off of" and "comprised of" are particularly obsessed-over examples of such alleged wordiness: see Arnold Zwicky, "And the winners are …". [ Hoary (talk) 10:03, 4 August 2015; continues under the interjection]


 * Hi again, I just wanted to say here that minor word choices on talk page posts should probably not be taken as evidence of how the editor approaches article wording or editing. Not to be argumentative, but I think my use of "that" in that particular sentence isn't relevant to the article's content.-- Ty rS  11:11, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I must have expressed myself particularly poorly. I'd intended to point to my use of "that" (in "I think that some people notice..."). &para; There are certain kinds of conspicuous verbal baggage that writers are encouraged to shed. An example: "Needless to say, blah blah". (Is saying "blah blah" needless? Then don't say it; you then won't also need to apologize for saying it. Or is saying "blah blah" needed? Then go ahead and say it, and skip the [factually incorrect] apology.) And of course many/most people would agree that in general, concision is a virtue. Yes, people complain about the allegedly superfluous "of" within "off of", etc. But my point was/is that few if any of these people apply the principle "cut needless words" consistently. Rather, they seem to have pet bugbears, and to invoke the principle "cut needless words" only where they want to slay the bugbears. -- Hoary (talk) 23:01, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Ack! No, that was my fault. I somehow misinterpreted your "in the previous sentence" and "could have omitted it". Somehow (my head was already swimming but that's not much of an excuse) I read it as meaning my previous sentence and that you would have omitted it. Sorry about that!-- Ty rS  14:58, 5 August 2015 (UTC) format tweak-- Ty  rS  15:00, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * You say: "But aren't everyone's personal lexical preferences inevitably at least somewhat subjective?" Yes! -- Hoary (talk) 10:03, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi again Hoary,

At the moment my brain is too overloaded (and if even G Pullum finds this all "head-swirlingly complex" and writes "Ye gods, this is confusing!", I feel I'm not in bad company) to completely process such a long post as the above. I can see how my initial post came across as kind of pointless in regard to article content. I would like, however, to experiment with the inclusion in the article of the following from G Pullum's 'Comprise Yourself' as it seems to go some way to explaining why at least one expert (that is, G Pullum) dislikes "comprised of":

"I see no reason to favor the inverted sense. There’s nothing virtuous about the ambiguity and auto-antonymy it promotes. It’s easier than you’d think for unclarity to arise about whether an author is saying some abstract X  makes up Y  or that it consists of Y. ... So I’d be happy for Bryan Henderson’s clarifying mission to succeed."

I was also thinking that somewhere at the beginning it might be worth quoting his "the situation is subtle, and head-swirlingly complex", though does he mean linguistically, grammatically and/or syntactically, or all of those, or would that be pleonastic?

I will attempt some of this soon, and look forward to reading your feedback on my edits.-- Ty rS  10:38, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Pullum is a descriptive linguist. He's not a prescriptivist. But to say he's not a prescriptivist doesn't mean that he lacks opinions on style. Actually he's bristling with opinions on style (famously, on the wretched style of Dan Brown). As a linguist, he can dispassionately describe the use of "comprised of"; as a (linguistically informed) columnist, he can express his own taste (and his comment on Henderson's mission). Our article only cites him as a linguist; I think it's fine also to cite him as a commenter on taste. I hope that the two are kept separate, however.


 * Pullum does indeed say that "the situation is subtle, and head-swirlingly complex". But he immediately follows this with "I’ll explain as clearly as I can." And I think he delivers on the latter. If he does, then we should concentrate on the explanation.


 * A very minor reply here: Yes, but half-way through the article he writes "(Ye gods, this is confusing! If your head is not spinning right now, you really aren’t paying adequate attention.)" I just think underestimating either the complexity of this (semantically, syntactically and historically) or the likelihood of personal preferences (whether anti-"comprised of" or anti-anti-"comprised of") being apparent would be a mistake.-- Ty rS  15:07, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * does he mean linguistically, grammatically and/or syntactically, or all of those: He means semantically and syntactically. (Ahem: syntax is a major part of grammar, and grammar and semantics are major parts of linguistics.) Semantically, he has to show the reader that the verb COMPRISE has long been used to link subject in object in one way and to link them in the opposite way. Syntactically, he has to show the reader that (i) an instance of VERB+ed may be a verb or an adjective; (ii) although COMPRISE is a verb, this verb isn't used in the passive; in "comprised of", "comprised" is an adjective.


 * If you'd like to add that Pullum concedes that this is confusing, you're welcome to do so. -- Hoary (talk) 23:01, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Questions re Syntax
I'm wondering about the following:

"Although comprise is a verb, comprised is an adjective if it takes as its complement a preposition phrase headed by of."

...

English has a number of adjectives that take as their complements preposition phrases headed by of. Common examples include afraid ("He's afraid of spiders"), aware ("They were aware of the dangers"), and convinced ("They became convinced of their strength").[n 4]

I have three questions about this:

1a) "of spiders", "of the dangers" and "of their strength" don't seem like any preposition(al) phrases I've ever come across (please see Wiktionary's examples).

1b) "afraid", "aware" and "convinced" are all adjectives to do with sentience, but comprise isn't. Perhaps it would help if examples not involving sentience (that is, more similar to comprise) could be substituted?

2) From Complement (linguistics): "In a broad general sense however, a complement can be understood as a word, phrase or clause that is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression." I may have the wrong end of the stick here, but isn't the argument about using/deprecating "comprised of" based on whether or not an individual judges the "of" to be "necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression"? Is the idea here that contemporary users of "comprised of" judge the "of" to be necessary to complete the meaning of "comprise"?

(I have to admit that the G. Pullum quote that follows doesn't clarify anything for me, I suspect due to the introduction of compose.)

I also don't understand why the section seems to assume that comprise should be used as an adjective. (I notice that Wiktionary only lists it as a verb.)-- Ty rS  12:49, 4 August 2015 (UTC) self-tweaked -- Ty  rS  14:15, 4 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary's treatment of prepositional of has a heavy bias toward semantics. In "afraid of spiders", "of" really has no meaning; it's instead a kind of grammatical tool that links "afraid" and "spiders". (If you want to find it within Wiktionary's list, then how about item 6.3: "Following an adjective, to introduce its subject matter". And no, I have no idea what "subject matter" means here.)


 * Unfortunately Wikipedia's own explanation of grammatical terms and grammar, particularly for English, is patchy at best. Improving it is a thankless job, one I don't want to be involved in after previously wasting hours of my life (at for example Talk:Possessive determiner, battling the ludicrous notion that "your" etc are adjectives). By contrast, I warmly recommend Huddleston and Pullum's A Student's Introduction to English Grammar. Copies are plentiful and cheap. (NB it's often used as a coursebook, so a used copy might have scribblings.)


 * Some other adjectives that take preposition phrases headed by of as their complements: characteristic, devoid, indicative, representative, suggestive.


 * Is the idea here that contemporary users of "comprised of" judge the "of" to be necessary to complete the meaning of "comprise"? I think we're going in circles here. I believe that everybody concedes that "X is comprised of Y" is widely used. Here, "of" is meaningless, just as it's meaningless in "afraid of spiders". Saying that it's meaningless is not the same as saying it's unnecessary. Most variants of "X is comprised of Y" that lack "of" (e.g. *"X is comprised Y", but I've provided a list above) are simply ungrammatical.


 * the argument about using/deprecating "comprised of": Henderson presents arguments for deprecating it; no need to repeat these on this talk page. Few people present arguments for using it. No surprise here: people use the words they think -- usually, if they are native speakers, subconsciously -- are at their disposal, without arguing for these. The argument for not proscribing it is that it's a well established part of English. An additional argument is that despite claims that it's "illogical", rarely if ever are examples given of how it's potentially ambiguous or misleading.


 * Pullum's argument is somewhat dense. I can only suggest rereading it when particularly alert.


 * I also don't understand why the section seems to assume that comprise should be used as an adjective. No, comprise (with "comprises" and "comprising") is a verb, and only a verb. (Well, I don't immediately have the OED at my disposal; for all I know comprise could also be an obscure noun.) Depending on how comprised is used, this may be a verb or a noun. The article does not assume anything; it has instead presented a sourced argument for saying that it's an adjective. There's a discussion of adjectival passives on pages 1436–1440 of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (a formidable, and horribly expensive book) and a greatly abridged version on page 246 of A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (the book recommended above).


 * To be fair to Wiktionary, its entry for "comprised" looks like a mere bot-generated derivative of that for "comprise". Entry, history and (non-existent) discussion page don't suggest that anybody devoted any thought to the matter. But in general, dictionaries are extraordinarily bad guides to the categories ("noun", "adjective", etc) of words. See Pullum, "Lexical categorization in English dictionaries and traditional grammars" (PDF). -- Hoary (talk) 00:13, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Just a couple more quick questions/suggestions here:
 * Instead of one of those sentience-related terms I mentioned above, could we instead use "made of" (and perhaps "made up of" too)? E.g. "Ice is made of frozen water." Could that work just as well?
 * Are "afraid of spiders" etc verb phrases?
 * Thanks!-- Ty rS  15:14, 5 August 2015 (UTC) small tweak-- Ty  rS  17:02, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Made of seems rather "grey". See the test I described above in the section "Category of 'comprised' in 'comprised of'". "REMAIN made of" seems unlikely for semantic reasons, but I tried Google Ngram Viewer for "appeared/appears/seemed/seems made of". There are very few hits. I didn't look at them; but experience tells me that when there are so few, they tend to be illusory (the result of unexpected constructions, etc). And a preposition phrase headed by of can go with the verb: "I asked you to make it of leather" (though "out of leather" sounds more natural to me here). &para; No, "afraid of spiders" is not a verb phrase. With a few exceptions ("fused heads" and maybe some other oddities I can't think of before my second coffee of the day), a [something] phrase has a [something] in it (so a verb phrase would have a verb in it). "Afraid", adjective; "of", preposition; "spiders", noun: there's no verb. Being afraid of spiders, being very afraid, being not at all afraid, being temporarily afraid: they're all variations of being afraid. Thus "afraid" is the head of "afraid of spiders", which is an adjective phrase. -- Hoary (talk) 23:18, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Usage by literary giants
Do we know if (each of) the LGs in the list used the phrase habitually? Or at least more than once? Did they use "to comprise of", "comprises of" and/or "comprising of"? Did they avoid using "composed of"? Did they ever use "comprised" without the "of"? -- Ty rS  15:20, 5 August 2015 (UTC) tweak-- Ty  rS  15:38, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Do you mean the list Anthony Trollope, Alfred North Whitehead, Norman Mailer, Lionel Trilling, Bertrand Russell, Harold Bloom, Joyce Carol Oates, Christopher Hitchens? These quotations weren't added by me and I don't know how they were found. Project Gutenberg offers 77 texts (mostly novels) by Trollope, and somebody sufficiently interested might grep them for the eight-letter string "comprise" (or indeed, thanks to regular expressions, for what I'll loosely describe as "compris* of"). As for the other writers, I presume that their works all remain in copyright, and therefore that it wouldn't be so easy to get them online and to search. But Google Books or Kindle might help. -- Hoary (talk) 23:34, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

"comprise/s of" & "comprising of"
I'm wondering why these don't get a mention. Doesn't the debate/argument/war involve them as well?-- Ty rS  15:29, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Because "comprised of" appears hugely more of than do the sum of "comprise of", "comprises of", "comprising of", and indeed preterite "comprised of". The former uses the adjective comprised and the latter use the verb comprise. People rarely discuss the latter, other than when they lazily assume that it's used/misused in the same way as the former.


 * As the article points out, Malaysian English differs from US/British English in a way that may be relevant to your question. (As I've written in this talk page, Singaporean English is the same as Malaysian English, but I don't have a source for this.) -- Hoary (talk) 23:42, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

1st 2 'evaluators'
I suggest we remove the Jim Pennypacker & Bonnie Trenga material as these two don't appear to have any particular linguistics credentials.-- Ty rS  15:40, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Have just done so. I hope no-one objects. In terms of qualifications compared to the other evaluators, their opinions seemed IMO not worth the space.-- Ty rS  18:23, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * You posted the question, and then went ahead and removed the material, while I was asleep in bed. Not that I'm upset about the matter; just saying.


 * At least one of the people the article still cites is a total ignoramus, whose opinions are worthless. (BLP policy prevents me from identifying this person.)


 * Cutting Trenga is no loss. However, I'm rather sorry to see Pennypacker go. This was a remarkable example of fulmination. Such great passions aroused by little "comprised of"!


 * If you'd like to cut what's superfluous, I see no more egregious example than Henderson's brother Robin, another Wikipedia editor, is reported to be engaged in a similar mission in reference to the phrase "based around". This of course says absolutely nothing about "comprised of". -- Hoary (talk) 23:53, 5 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Ah well, I was on a roll. (And I suspect we're in very different time zones.) I hope you had a good rest! Anything you're unhappy with please don't be shy - revert or discuss here.


 * I'm more than happy to see other ignoramus content removed, and I totally agree about the Robin Henderson material.-- Ty rS  02:48, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * If I may: I believe in such articles one should only cite "authorities" using a phrase if reliable secondary sources note that use. Otherwise there can be no rationale for keeping one and ditching another--I mean, why include Trollope and not Dickens? (I have no idea if Dickens used it or not, but that's not the point). That's what I tried to do on Between you and I. Drmies (talk) 03:00, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Lead and section headings
I don't know enough about this topic to feel comfortable editing the lead, but someone more familiar with the nuances might consider adding a sentence or two to clarify some things for those of us not "in the know." I'd never heard of any controversy about this phrase before, so the reference to its disparagement by professionals piqued my interest, but then the lead didn't offer any explanation and the section headings weren't helpful, so I had to read way more of the body than I wanted to. Out of all of the section headings in the TOC, "Evaluation" was literally the last place I looked. That should probably be changed too. Lastly, even though I chuckled a little at the wording of this sentence from the lead, "Its use has been disparaged by a constituent comprised of language professionals, although it is common in writing and speech," it seems snarky, which probably isn't appropriate? Just my 2 cents as a laymen. One more thing actually, IMHO the Use subsections should be at the very end, but I don't know what style guideline would cover it, so I didn't move it myself. Permstrump (talk) 21:41, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
 * (Re: controversy) I’m no writer, but I’d been reading “grammar-tips” articles since c1975, and I wasn’t aware of the issue til 1996. Seen it quite a few times since, though. MBG02 (talk) 04:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

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