Comprise again

rogersgeorge on May 10th, 2012

A pretentiousism is when you use a fancier word than you need, particularly when you use that fancy word incorrectly. One of my favorite such words to hate consists of the compose/comprise dichotomy.

I’m reading A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss. It’s a book on cosmology written to literate (read interested in cosmology) laypeople. So far the book has been a nice review of a lot of material about cosmology that I’ve already read, and it pulls some things together for me. On page 113 I ran into a nice correct use of “comprise,” and I decided to share it with you. Remember, “comprise” goes between the whole and its parts, in that order. It’s a rather long sentence; bear with me until you get near the end.

It is worth repeating the implications of this remarkable agreement more forcefully: Only in the first seconds of a hot Big Bang with an initial abundance of protons and neutrons that would result in something very close to the observed density matter in visible galaxies today, and a density of radiation that would leave a remnant that would correspond precisely to the observed intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation today, would nuclear reactions occur that could produce precisely the abundance of light elements, hydrogen and deuterium, helium, and lithium, that we infer to have comprised the basic building blocks of the stars that now fill the night sky.

The part that I’m interested in is “…the abundance…that we infer to have comprised the building basic building blocks…” The abundance (the whole thing) comprises the blocks (plural, parts). A complicated sentence, but he got it right.

However, the book is good for more than a good example. On page 114 I found this poor misshapen gem:

When 60 percent of the visible matter in the universe is comprised of helium, there will be no necessity for production of primordial helium in a hot Big Bang in order to produce agreement with observation.

The universe will be 60% composed of helium, or if you prefer, the universe will be made up of 60% helium. (Best is to avoid the whole issue: the universe is 60% helium).
Dr. Krauss is hardly someone I’d accuse of being pretentious, but it’s fun to catch the smart guys once in a while, too.

One of the denser illustrations in the book

To be fair, Dr. Krauss uses “comprise” correctly at least twice more, in consecutive sentences, no less. Repetition is the mother of learning, so I’ll quote them here so you can practice seeing how the word is used correctly.

More recently, however, universe has come to have a simpler, arguably more sensible meaning. It is now traditional to think of “our” universe as comprising simply the totality of all that we can now see and all that we could ever see. Physically, therefore, our universe comprises everything that either once could have had an impact upon us or that ever will.

I leave it as an exercise for you, dear reader, to work out that these usages are correct.

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Three things you should never say

rogersgeorge on May 8th, 2012

Maybe not absolutely never, but hardly ever. (What’s that line in The Mikado? “What never? No, never. What never? Well, hardly ever!”)

I was a sales trainer in another life. For the United States Chamber of Commerce, no less.  One of the things I taught my trainees never to say in a presentation was these two phrases:  “I want” and “let me.” By the way, did you notice that I wrote “was these two phrases?” That’s a singular verb, and “two phrases” is a plural. What gives? Re-read the sentence, and you will realize that the subject is the first word in the sentence, a singular. The two phrases were a single lesson. I admit the sentence is somewhat awkward, having the subject and verb so far apart, but it’s a good example of being alert about subject-verb agreement.

I want to show you our new product. Let me show you how wonderful it is.

Nothing will brand you as a pushy salesperson more quickly than those two pairs of words.

Now the third thing you should never say: “I’d like.”

I’d like to thank you all for reading my blog.

Don’t say that you’re going to say something, just say it!

Thank you for reading The Writing Rag. Knowing that you spend your valuable time here strongly motivates me to produce the best material I can.

Cleaner, crisper, more direct, more sincere, less work for your reader, and you’re doing something, not merely promising to do it. Don’t say you’d like to do something unless something is preventing you from doing it.

Here’s an example of someone using “I’d like” correctly:

My thanks to John Hambrock, who writes The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee.

I’d like to post a link to the comic, but I’m not sure it works.

Fish poem

rogersgeorge on May 6th, 2012

1. Last fall I attended the Annapolis Boat show. One outcome of my visit was a subscription to the boating magazine SpinSheet. It’s a pulp with lots of contributions from readers. A recent issue had an article titled something like “Sitting on the dock in the bay.” Notice that that line is a double dactyl with an accent at the end.

2. Recently my brother came to town for a visit. Among other things, he had a good time reciting a poem about a mouse in a bar being ready to take on the cat after drinking some Guinness that had spilled onto the floor.

The tone of my brother’s poem, combined with the title of that article, inspired me to write this poem. Somewhat timidly, I offer it to my discerning readers. Sorry it’s so long. Mixed meter tetrameter, rhymed couplets, mostly.

I was dozing on the pier in the Chesapeake bay
When a great big fish swam up my way.
And then the fish spoke and I really awoke!
What I tell you is true, this is no joke.
Said the fish to me, “I’ll grant you a wish
If you grant me a boon—to this poor old fish.”
Amazed though I was to speak to a fish,
I asked him “Sir, what is your wish?”
And then that fish, he winked at me.
“I’ve heard about coffee, you see,” said he
“If you could bring me a taste that I could try,
Then I would be happy, before I die.”
I pondered a while his dilemma true:
The sea would ruin the finest brew.
I thought some more and then I knew a way!
“Just bide right here and stay in the bay.”
I ran to the coffee shop of my choice,
And announced to Emma in a confident voice,
“I need a special coffee brewed today,
So would you kindly make it just my way?”
She knew her trade, this barista fair,
But she looked at me askance as she tossed her hair.
“I know your tricks, you homely man,
You ask for something hard ’cause you think you can;
But I like a challenge, so fire away.”
And she began my special brew that day.
She ground those coffee beans so fine,
They turned to dust in almost no time.
Then she pressed them flat on a little tray.
“That flat enough for your taste today?”
She asked with her eyebrow raised halfway.
“Looks good to me,” I said with glee,
“Now one more step I need from thee.
Just wrap it in your finest pastry dough,
And into the oven now it must go,
To brown that flakey dough just so.”
She took it from the oven when it was done,
Saying, “Here’s your coffee-hiding bun.”
I took the little scone out to the pier
And called to the fish “I have it here!”
Pop this in your mouth and hold it still.
When the pastry melts, you’ll get the thrill
Of the taste of the very best coffee mill.”
So he took it in his mouth and held it a while,
Then his face broke out in a great big smile!
“A taysht define I dho deglaire!”
He said as he flipped his tail in the air.
He savored it a while, then swallowed it down,
Then he looked at me and he looked at the town.
“I made a promise that I must keep
Before I return to the briny deep.
What is your wish, my clever man?
I’ll do it for you, friend, if ever I can.”
I knew right away what I wanted him to do.
“I hope this isn’t too hard for you:
I’ve always been homely, so I would wish
That you make me ever so handsome, dear fish.”
“I’ll make you like the handsomest thing I’ve seen
In all the places that I ever have been.
‘Tis easy to do.” He gave his tail a swish
And turned me into—a great big fish!

Postscript: I had planned to take this to the coffeehouse in the poem, down in the historic district in Annapolis, and read it unannounced, in  the hearing of all the customers and the staff, one of whom is Emma. The day ahead of this planned performance, I was having a snack at a restaurant and doing some reading. I realized that the background music they played at the coffeehouse would interfere with my extemporaneous performance. Alas, Emma would never hear my poem, and neither would the customers. As I left the restaurant where I had been reading, whom should I run into but Emma! I let her read the poem and she laughed several times as she read it. She said she liked it. Life is good.

Nice adverb

rogersgeorge on May 3rd, 2012

Lots of people have trouble with the phrase “different from.” Commonly they write “different than.” So what’s the difference? Both forms have been used a lot (and in England they say “different to.” Gak.) Bartleby says “different from” is the only one that nobody says is wrong.  Rather like nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee. “Different from” functions as an adjective, though. You use it when you compare substantives (words that are like nouns, including nouns, pronouns, and gerunds).  So you can say, for example,

A husband’s method of doing something might be different from his wife’s method of doing the same thing.

But what if you’re comparing verbs? Then you need an adverb! The adverb is “differently. ”

I happen to be reading The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, by Dr. Laura Schlessinger. My wife and I are planning to read it together, but I got a little head start. (I hope there’s also a book about the proper care and feeding of wives, but to tell the truth, neither of us has much of a complaint about the other, but I digress.) The book has excellent English, some of the cleanest I have seen in a book in a while, and this morning I ran into the sentence that led to this post. Dr. Schlessinger does a nice job with “differently,” so I’m going to share it with you.

Wives need to remind themselves that when their husbands do something differently from how they would do it themselves, it does not constitute a breach of sanity or a display of contempt.

Note the correct use of “from.” Nice. You can tell what verbs are being compared, right?

Dr. S, posed differently from how I would expect. Yup, the pose is different from the usual one.

Ladies, (so far, anyway) I recommend the book as a source of some good ideas about how you might treat your hubby differently from how you might be treating him, and to everyone, I recommend the book for the good grammar.

Animals and language

rogersgeorge on May 1st, 2012

Over the past several years I’ve read quite a few items about about primates using American Sign Language, and other forms of animal-to-human communication. If you follow this blog, you know I’m reading Spencer Wells’ The Journey of Man. Here’s a passage about animal language that I had not seen, and it clarifies some things for me, so I thought I’d share. The whole book is worth a read, and if your library doesn’t have it, put in a book request.

… It is at this age that most children begin to put together three words into complex sentences – ‘Margot kiss Daddy’, rather than simply ‘Margot kiss’ or ‘Kiss Daddy’ – with the subject-verb-object (SVO) structure, or syntax, that characterizes English and most other human languages. The structure SOV (‘Margot Daddy kiss’) is used by a few languages (Japanese, Korean, and Tibetan among others), while VSO and VOS structures are used by around 15% of languages (Welsh is an example of the former and Malagasy of the latter). The rarest structure of all is OSV, perhaps best known from the film The Empire Strikes Back as the language of Yoda the Jedi master: ‘Sick have I become’ and so on, used by only a handful of languages spoken in the Brazilian Amazon.

The important thing to glean from this syntactic diversity is that word order plays a crucial role in our understanding of a sentence. …

So, the explosion of linguistic complexity in a two-year-old is a result of the mastery of syntax, and from then on it is a never-ending barrage of ever more complex sentences. The great leap forward in understanding, however, involves crossing the syntax barrier… This is what we see with chimpanzees taught to use American Sign Language … The significant difference in human vs. ape communication seems to have been the creation of brain structures that allowed an understanding of syntax, and thus the communication of complex meaning.

Gorillas can do ASL, too

This is a more extended passage than I usually quote, but the remarks about chimps and syntax don’t make a lot of sense without the examples of syntax. The whole section is good. (Pages 86 and 87 if you look it up.) I had been wondering if there was a qualitative difference between ape and human language ability beyond anatomical hindrances in the chimp. Now I see there is.