I’m never sure how I’m opposed to feel about this sort of thing. Grant it, there are definitely right and wrong ways to express an idea, but I think he should of gotten more input from the community first. Its really concerning how he knows their are differences of opinion, but doesn’t seem to care about anyone who disagrees with him. He’s basically saying he’s going to get his way irregardless of what other’s want, and with no thought for the affect this will have on their feelings. 15,000 changes means making changes to things that alot of different people have spent time on. He’s just one person–that’s 14,999 less people’s feelings who might get hurt here if we keep things the way they are. If it were I, we should just leave well enough alone. I promise you, at the end of the day, you could care less about this sort of thing.
At least it’s a harmless obsession and an edit that doesn’t affect the sense of the articles. Or effect a change in the sense of the articles. The effect is anyway non-affecting — as in not effecting a change of affect … 
Someone needs to write a bot to revert all of his edits.
The Red-pill Affect
WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN
#MY HEAD ASPLODE
That’s what I was referring to. But I’m allusional.
Well played. Would be better with a few audible mispronounced words that are now commonly accepted (harass, I’m looking at you).
Now you’re fucking up the meaning of “correct!” It is not now nor has it ever been a synonym for “adequate.” A bandsaw may perform the job of opening a can of beans, but it is not the correct tool for that job.
By your definition, TH|$ sEnTan¢Σ izz 5peld correctly.
I don’t know about you folks, but I’ll sleep a lot better tonight!
edit: meant as reply to OP, not Mariachi here
Stand back, it’s gonna asplode!!
Jonathan is absolutely right, of course. My Oxford English Dictionary has examples of “comprised of” stretching from 1481 through 1970.
Of course, when effect is a verb, it means
To produce, as a cause or agent; to cause to be.
When affect is a verb, it means
- To act upon; to produce an effect or change upon.
Very different, but in subtle way.
When effect is a noun, it means
In general: That which is produced by an agent or cause;
the event which follows immediately from an antecedent,
called the cause; result; consequence; outcome; fruit; as,
the effect of luxury.
But when affect is a noun, it is
Affection; inclination; passion; feeling; disposition.
Sounds Imminently reasonable!
Riiiiiight. All of which explains the Morpheus meme, don’t it?
I like this alot.
I actually read the entire manifesto. And I really do not begrudge this man his hobby. If that’s what he wants to do with his time, so be it.
That said, I disagree with his central premise that this is “incorrect”, simply because English is not confined to a single, static form dictated by a governing body (e.g. French). English is whatever is commonly spoken and widely understood, period. Your English teacher, when she told you that “irregardless” was not a word, was lying to you. Or incompetent. Possibly both. And so is Giraffedata.
He addresses this specifically in the “Rebuttals” section, and in the process of rejecting the argument, he reveals that he does not in fact understand the core foundations of the English language:
As we can see in a web search, there are a great number of people who are perfectly fine with “comprised of”. In fact, many of them have never heard that there’s a problem with it. Dictionaries list it.
The prevalence argument does very little for me – I don’t see grammar as a majority rule thing. The prevalence would have to be about 99% for me to accept it as valid (though still unfortunate) usage. Bear in mind that a great many people write “could of”, yet few people who study the issue argue this is a Wikipedia-worthy way to say “could have”.
The highlighted part (highlighting is mine) is in fact fundamentally wrong. Grammar and vocabulary in the English language are entirely about majority rule. It has never been any other way. Style guides and dictionaries merely reflect common usage. As Merriam-Webster puts it, the goal is to be authoritative without being authoritarian.
And if he really wants to be a pedant about it (and for all the wrong reasons, no less) I would like to point him to the definition and etymology of “decimate”.
Knock it down a bit to wikipedia itself, and the Great God Google says it found ~6k instances:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="comprised%20of"%20site%3Awikipedia.org
You know, in general grammar Nazis can be pretty tedious, but you got to give a tip 'o the hat to him for his sheer dedication. In a 'net chocked full of pedants (dare I say comprised of them?), he knows how to distinguish himself from the wanna-bes!
I have mixed feelings about the conundrum of “common usage”. In concept, it’s properly democratic. But in practice, my experience is that it seldom involves real creative (ab)use of language, and instead constitutes clueless misunderstandings of established, understood usage. So instead of people saying: “That’s clever, I think I’ll use that myself.” we get a gradual drift based fundamentally upon confusion. This also needlessly increases the complexity of the language itself because coining new usages where there were others tends to be redundant.
I very much prefer for people’s usage of language and non-standard lexicography to be deliberate.
What’s funny is this is actually a set of “defined term” in English language (i.e. US, UK, Canada) patent law - “comprised of” is considered an “open-ended” transition (from the preamble to the claim elements) and means that the claimed article can have the claimed elements that follow in it and other unnamed elements and still infringe the claim; but “consists of” is considered an “closed-ended” transition which means the claimed article can have only the claimed elements that follow and nothing else. I’ve never seen anyone else even notice the language except for patent attorneys and agents.
