Good ol’ comprise. Again.

rogersgeorge on December 12th, 2013

Correct use of “comprise” is one of my hobby-horses; I recently found a couple examples of it being used correctly, so I decided it’s time to have a repeat lesson.

Shall I tell you why people get “comprise” wrong? Because they want to sound educated. In other words, they’re being pretentious. It’s the same thing that leads people to say “prior” when they mean “before,” and Latinize the plural of “process” into “processese.” Artificial fancy usages are pretentiousisms.  “Is composed of” sounds so mundane, they have to class it up with a fancier word. Trouble is, they get it wrong.

“Comprise” means “is composed of,” which is a passive construction. You want to avoid using the passive when you can, so “comprise” is a handy alternative.

 A hybrid eclipse comprises a total solar eclipse and an ‘annular eclipse’, depending on an observer’s viewing location on Earth.

Four of the five remaining Santa Cruz cypress habitats are now parklands or ecological reserves. The population comprises a healthy 33,000 trees or more, so the fws [Fish and Wildlife Service] has proposed reclassifying the species as merely “threatened.”

You can find the first quote at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=41862 and the second quote at http://www.world-science.net.

Rule of thumb: Start with the single, big thing, then comprise, then more than one smaller thing. So, Hybrid eclipse comprises total and annular. Now you do the second one for practice. Be clear, not pretentious.

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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.

Some more small mistakes

rogersgeorge on January 17th, 2012


These are some items that have been piling up in my solecism folder. I use the term “small mistakes” advisedly. You shouldn’t make any of them.

  • Lego has no plural. The company that owns the word says always to use the singular; never say “Legos.” It’s their football, they make the rules.
  • Prescribe means you must; proscribe means you must not.
  • Eager means looking to the future with happiness; anxious means looking to the future with fear. You should be eager, not anxious, to meet up with your girlfriend.
  • Imply means to suggest; infer means to guess. Okay, an educated guess.
  • Compose goes from the parts to the whole; comprise goes from the whole to the parts. Thirteen colonies composed the early USA; the early USA comprised 13 colonies. Never say “is comprised of.”
  • Who is for people; that is for things. I am the one who tells you about grammar. A computer screen is a thing that you look at.
  • Affect is a verb; effect is a noun. Yes, I know about the exceptions. If you do too, you don’t need to be told about this mistake anyway. A mistake has the effect of making the person seem careless, but it won’t affect me.

That’ll do for now, class. Go and sin no more. Wait! Here’s a test. See if you can tell which picture goes with which word. These words are fairly abstract, and my picture choices are subjective, so if you can defend your choice, count it as correct. I also don’t guarantee that all the words are represented, or that each picture represents only one word.

           
Click for full size

Maybe one of you WordPress gurus can tell me how to make these pictures go side by side.

Freebie today

rogersgeorge on November 21st, 2011

Normally I post every other day, but I just ran into another correct use of “comprise,” which I mentioned a few days ago. So this post is an extra, between my usual posts. Repetition is the mother of learning, eh?

This is from the weekly comments newsletter sent out each Sunday from AWAD, which I highly recommend.

Yes, this is a symmetry problem. Any word has the same property if its spelling exclusively comprises some of these upper case letters: BCDEHIOX.

The big thing comprises its parts. Correct!

Compose or comprise?

rogersgeorge on November 18th, 2011

“Comprise” is a frequently misused word, a common accessory to the sin of pretentiousness. People want to sound high class, so they write “is comprised of” when they mean “is composed of” or even plain old “composes.”

I ran into an article in The New York Times online that presented them with a wonderful opportunity to be pretentious, and they didn’t take it! Hooray (for once) for The New York Times! here’s what they said, and it’s correct:

The project follows the successful effort by a group at the museum to replicate a far less complicated Babbage invention: the Difference Engine No. 2, a calculating machine composed of roughly 8,000 mechanical components assembled with a watchmaker’s precision.

The machine is composed of parts! Yesss!

Now that is a construction in the passive voice. What if they had wanted to use the active voice? Then they would have written:

The project follows the successful effort by a group at the museum to replicate a far less complicated Babbage invention: the Difference Engine No. 2, a calculating machine comprising roughly 8,000 mechanical components assembled with a watchmaker’s precision.

Now “comprise” is appropriate.

Never ever say “…is comprised of…” Ever! Unless you’re showing someone what not to do. Harrumpf.

Here’s a picture of the difference engine.

The machine is about eight feet tall. That's a picture of Charles Babbage on the wall.