Saturday, December 3, 2016

Still at it

Not from The Onion: “Wikipedia grammar vigilante vows to keep fighting against ‘comprised of’ despite ‘resistance’” (iNews).

And from February 2015: “Man’s Wikipedia Edits Mostly Consist of Deleting ‘Comprised Of’” (Gizmodo).

comments: 5

Fresca said...

I meet these people as I edit Wikipedia.
Annoying? Adorable?
Yes.

Michael Leddy said...

Single-minded? Yes. He’s right, of course, but I can think of many ways I’d rather spend time. :)

Slywy said...

If he were to peruse Facebook comments on public posts from Americans, he would worry less about "comprised of" and more about why native English speakers can't string together a comprehensible series of words. It's surreal how many are gibberish that can't be parsed. It's not slangy gibberish, which I could parse. Just incomprehensible attempts to communicate.

Michael Leddy said...

After seeing your comment, I looked at Bryan Henderson’s user page. He writes that “It’s illogical for a word to mean two opposite things.” Maybe, but contronyms such as cleave, fast, and oversight are part of the language. He commits the so-called etymological fallacy, arguing that an English word’s Latin source prohibits certain meanings for that word. His authorities are almost all Internet-based: no mention of Fowler, Strunk and White, Garner. He’s right about “comprised of,” but he’s hardly a model thinker about English.

Slywy said...

"software engineer" explains the mindset.