> This person's arguments seem to hold water.
Not in the slightest. Categorically, he's using prescriptive arguments, which are bunk. Language evolves, people can use it however they want.
Not in the slightest. Categorically, he's using prescriptive arguments, which are bunk. Language evolves, people can use it however they want.
With respect to this case, I'd have to see a given usage in context but I would probably generally leave it as is.
If I'm editing you I'll try to avoid making a lot of changes that boil down to stylistic choice but I will absolutely change things I (and my references) consider wrong.
ADDED: You can of course personally use language however you want. But others will judge you based on that.
I'd support this guy if he said "I hate 'comprised of' and so I am changing it where I can", but the idea that there's somehow a logical argument justifying it is silly. Appeal to authority is particularly silly in the context of linguistics.
If you like MLA style, do that. I personally love a little extra diaeresis and the oxford comma, but I wouldn't make them the law.
Oh, I would :-) But I do reluctantly conform to AP style in certain contexts.
That said, there is a certain appeal to authority mindset if you're looking for mainstream non-fiction (and a lot of fiction as well) publication. Maybe "correct" isn't the right term but "accepted practice" or something along those lines which boils down to more or less the same thing.
A prescriptivist will say that a term is “correct,” a descriptivist will say a term is “commonly accepted.”
Personally, this is what I say to prescriptivists: if they want a language with legally defined rules - they should learn French.
Why AP style - written specifically for journalists - instead of all the other styles such as APA, Chicago, etc. etc.?
Otherwise, I/we use Chicago and Oxford comma.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-you-use-co...
There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).
But changing quotations seems like a step too far. I think his practice of changing a quotation to a paraphrasing (where it doesn't really matter if the article includes a quotation or not) is fine (if a little obsessive). But actually changing quotations feels wrong to me.
I do agree with his assessment that including people's grammatical/spelling mistakes in a quotation detracts from what the person said, but I don't think the correct move is to change the quotation to something the person didn't actually say. At most, the "offending" part of the quotation should be removed and replaced with correct usage inside square brackets to indicate the changed/added part was not part of the original quotation. But overall I think he should just leave these instances alone.
> There methods comprise of robbing others autonomy. (Wording chosen purposefully!).
I think you are in a way proving the editor's point, though? Purposefully chosen or not (I did chuckle a little), that sentence is garbage, and if I were to read that in something without knowing or realizing it was a joke, I would take your words less seriously. I would think, if you can't even use language properly, and need to "inflate" your words, maybe your ideas are overinflated too.
On a different note, I don't think we should care about people's "autonomy" when we're talking about a resource like Wikipedia. "Letting people write whatever and however they want" is not a positive trait in an encyclopedia.
“[sic]”, which is always lowercase, indicates something the current author views as (probably) erroneous or otherwise improper that is left unchanged in the quoted text, to emphasize that the author isn’t endorsing the usage/construction so marked. It doesn’t mark a change.
But, yeah, the basic point is to not change a quote unless it's some trivial mistake. (But you can flag it so that it doesn't look like you're the one who may have screwed up.)
Also consider the "why": does this phrase pop up more and more often due to misunderstandings and copy/paste? Or is it because people actually want to change the meaning of the phrase and are doing it consciously? I don't see any evidence of the latter.
Language is important. It's the foundation of communication. I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.
Put another way: sure, language evolves as people use it differently. But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way, than it is to push the language to avoid it?
This is not true at all. Merriam-Webster includes it as its second definition of three [1]. It is not presented as an "alternate" or as confusing or incorrect in any way. To the contrary, there is a usage note at the end emphasizing its validity -- how it is "now somewhat more common in general use".
> I think it's noble to push against inadvertent usage changes that make the language more ambiguous.
But there is nothing ambiguous whatsoever about "is comprised of". Its meaning is crystal clear.
> But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way
It's not, because they're not "pushing" anything. People are just communicating in the same constructions they've unconsciously absorbed, like they do with most of language. The only people "pushing" are people like this Wikipedia editor, who is trying to impose an exclusionary viewpoint that, for example, the editors of Merriam Webster disagree with.
Are you sure? There appear to have been 90k instances of usage in widely read reference material (e.g. Wikipedia, bar this crusade). I'd say that qualifies.
> I don't see any evidence of the latter.
I'm pretty sure people use it based on the meaning they intend it to have, see prior statement for substantial evidence :P
> sure, language evolves as people use it differently. But why is it any more valid to push the language toward using "comprised of" in this new way, than it is to push the language to avoid it?
I don't think anyone but the Wiki editor is pushing anything. I'm saying use language as you like, just don't try to justify your personal crusade based on "correctness", be it moral or technical. I don't care for that style of usage of "comprised of" either, particularly, but I wouldn't try to tell other people how to write, and I think the meaning and purpose of the phrase is perfectly clear.
Note that I'm not saying we should write poorly, or deliberately sloppily, just it's at the author or editor's preference.
The English/American are culturally less prescriptive around grammar, but other languages (such as French) are often much more prescriptive with it.
It's not.
> If people are using words in a way that doesn't make sense to the reader, such as changing the meaning of them to be the opposite like the word factoid, it's not the reader that is wrong by pointing out that the word has a different meaning than intended.
The reader can say "It was unclear", "I didn't like it", or "that seems like it's opposite to what I would expect", but "wrong" is a silly thing to say. None of these things are even absolute within published English literature, let alone just say American, or UK, English literature. Even if you're following a particular style manual things are ambiguous in many cases.