[projectaon] Re: Mass Errata Listing
- From: Timothy Pederick <pederick@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:50:26 +0800
On 2010-02-12, Ingo Kloecker <projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I'd say this is a different situation because, semantics aside,
>> "which comprise of" is straight out grammatically incorrect. Also,
>> in this case, either "which comprise" or "which are composed of"
>> don't look awkward (at least to me), so I don't think we need to be
>> going to the thesaurus here :)
>
> "which are composed of" sounds weird to my (German) ears. I wouldn't use
> "composed of" in combination with groups of people or animals. I'd only
> use it for things. So, I vote for using "which comprise".
I agree. But you all knew I would. :-P
The facts of the matter are...
1) Using "comprise" to mean "make up, is composed of" is non-standard
and bugs the heck out of people like me who know it's wrong.
2) The same usage is quite common and sounds perfectly normal to many
people, evidently including Joe Dever.
3) It mostly occurs in the passive ("is composed of"), but sometimes
in the active as well.
4) It can be replaced in both cases with "compose".
5) But "compose" in the active ("the parts compose the whole"), while
perfectly valid, sounds uncommonly formal even to me.
Therefore, I think the best solution is to try and find a synonym,
like "constitute", which everyone can accept. And the second best
solution (which others may think is the best solution) is to just
stick with the non-standard use of "comprise".
--
Tim Pederick
~~~~~~
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