Mankind is notorious for abusing other living things, for example, bird eggs with DDT, deforestation, gorillas in zoo cages, toxic waste, paving paradise, radiation, endangering the Quietschb\u00fckers, etc. But what about language? Language is a living thing. In fact, people cite the \u201cliving\u201d status of language as the very reason it\u2019s OK to abuse it.<\/p>\n
I can use any word any way I want to because \u201clanguage is a living, evolving thing,\u201d instead of a \u201cdead\u201d or static set of rules and definitions. If language were dead, we would have to obey its rules, but because it\u2019s alive, we can have our way with it.<\/p>\n
I once witnessed a forum debate on the usage of \u201ccomprise\u201d in formal writing, where one person defended strict usage, while an opponent claiming to represent the \u201ccommon man\u201d chimed in, \u201cGet ready to be overruled by the proletariat!\u201d\u2026as though it\u2019s a noble revolution of the masses to bring slipshod colloquial carelessness into formal publications. Storm the Bastille and raise the flag of sloppy usage\u2014liberate the untutored writers from the scolding school teachers. You get the idea. Instead of the masses abusing spotted owls, bald eagles, and gorillas, they were now turning against a truly endangered species, \u201cEditors.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Editor with integrity enforces usage that is supported by most style manuals. Yes, editors \u201cmust obey\u201d style manuals (albeit sometimes in-house manuals trump general ones). Style manuals are by and large made for editors, whereas dictionaries are made for everyone. Take the \u201ccomprise\u201d controversy\u2014dictionaries say using comprise to mean \u201ccompose\u201d is iffy but OK; whereas major style manuals such as the AP Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style still recommend the strict usage of \u201ccomprise\u201d (the whole comprises the parts, e.g., \u201cthe Union comprises fifty states\u201d).<\/p>\n
The \u201ccomprise\u201d controversy is one of the oldest and biggest bones of contention between editors and the raging proletariat. Today most careful editors will avoid the controversial (aka sloppy) usage, since it has the potential to look unprofessional. As the Chicago Manual of Style states, \u201cWhile common usage can excuse many slipshod expressions, the standards of good usage make demands on writers and editors\u201d (5.220, 16th ed., 2010). It goes on to recommend usage more strict than most dictionaries for words like comprise\/compose, disinterested\/uninterested, ensure\/insure, farther\/further, infer\/imply, and a few hundred others.<\/p>\n
Back to comprise\u2014perhaps in five or ten years using comprise as a synonym for \u201ccompose\u201d will look fine, and no one will remember the old comprise controversy. After all, language is a living, evolving thing. But for now, stand firm against the abuse of comprise and other crimes of linguistic lassitude. Avoid phrases like \u201cthe Union is comprised of fifty states\u201d and be a patriotic editor who insists that \u201cthe Union comprises fifty states.\u201d To many writers, editors, and publishers, that distinction remains a shibboleth of integrity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mankind is notorious for abusing other living things, for example, bird eggs with DDT, deforestation, gorillas in zoo cages, toxic waste, paving paradise, radiation, endangering the Quietschb\u00fckers, etc. But what about language? Language is a living thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,16,15,18],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-editorial","tag-semantics","tag-style","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1671,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/1671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobzeen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}