Comprises or Comprised of

This is not going down well on the left of the Democratic Party, which is clustered in cities and increasingly comprised of the well-educated. (Globe and Mail, 14/10/21)

Spare a thought for Wikipedia editor Bryan Henderson, who would have had a minor apoplectic fit on reading the sentence above. He detested the phrase “is comprised of” so much that he dedicated much of his life to removing it from the dictionary, replacing it 47,000 times with the simple verb “comprises”. He would have corrected the Globe as follows:

The Democratic Party increasingly comprises the well educated.

Surely, his Sisyphean effort deserves our support. Why? It’s shorter. It’s active rather than passive. It is also logical, etymologically, coming from the old French comprehendre, via the feminine past participle, comprise. And it’s the preferred usage of style guides.

A whole comprises its parts. “Comprise” functions grammatically in the same way as “include”. However, after “comprise” all the parts making up the whole are named, while after “include” only some need be mentioned. “The set comprises 12 volumes; the 12-volume set includes an index.” (Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage)

A few days later, the Globe gave us another disputed usage of the verb. Here the subject and object of the verb “comprise” are reversed.

In the oil and gas sector around the world, women comprise 27 per cent of positions that require a college education, 25 per cent of mid-level positions and only 17 per cent of positions of leadership, according to the report. (Globe and Mail, 17/10/21)

No, Women constitute (or make up) 27 per cent of positions that require a college education.

Two days later, the verb crops up in the Globe again, this time used "correctly".

The Rogers Control Trust, which, along with other family holding companies it controls, owns 97.5 per cent of the company’s voting Class A shares, is overseen by an advisory committee comprising 10 people. (Globe and Mail, 19/10/21)

For more topics, see the Table of Contents.

The Missing Apostrophe

All hail to thee, apostrophe. Prithee,

Why dost thou stray from where thou dost belong

Within a word considered rather long,

Where once, it seems, a  letter used to be?

Or from thy cherished spot before the S

To show a noun in the possessive case?

Forsooth, stray not, poor mite, but know thy place

Within the lexicon. Do not transgress!

Certes, ‘tis true, when there is more than one,

After the S thou findest thee a gig,

But never on a verb, that’s infra dig,

A solecism grave, that thou must shun.

Of all the marks of punctuat-i-un

Thou causest the most grief, to all and sun’.

The omission of an apostrophe in a Facebook post is likely to prove expensive for an Australian real estate agent, according to a ruling by a New South Wales judge. More on that later.

There are many apostrophe errors. Like the Oxford Comma, one even has a name: the Greengrocer’s Apostrophe, the apostrophe applied erroneously in front of an “s” indicating a plural, not possession, as in 

ORANGE’S  $2.29 a lb.

You don’t find many greengrocers these days, but the error is widespread. 

Other apostrophe errors can be named as well.

Pupils who listened to their teacher saying "put the apostrophe in front of the 's'", but missed the rest of the lesson, will put the apostrophe in front of every "s", as in the greengrocer's apostrophe error, or even worse, in the present tense of a third person singular verb, to commit the Verb Apostrophe Error.

The snail crawl's across the room.

The Cottage Sign Apostrophe Error is common in cottage country, where proud owners have erected a sign in front of their cabin, such as

SMITH’S HAVEN

when in fact the dwelling belongs to more than one Smith.

Then there’s the Boy’s Gym Error, which I have observed in schools, where a large facility is frequented by only one person, or the official perhaps has corrected this error, and now always places the apostrophe after an “s” with plural nouns to commit the Mens' Washroom Error. Unfortunately, if the unfortunate official is forced to correct his Mens’ Washroom error then he may go further and come up with Ladie’s Washroom.

The Boy's Gym error is ubiquitous. Many an institution is limited to having only one member. For short time, in the seventies, I was the only teacher in the Manitoba Teacher's Society.

In the Possessive It’s Error, the writer has forgotten that only as a contraction does “its” require an apostrophe, as in “It’s a nice day”, but not as a possessive, as in “The dog sat on its tail.” Possessive pronouns don’t have apostrophes, except in the King James Bible in the Sermon on the Mount. 

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.

Now the unfortunate official, and others who have not had the benefit of a solid grounding in the correct use of apostrophes, might be tempted to leave them out altogether. After all, it’s usually good advice: if you don’t know what you’re doing, do nothing. But not in the case of a foolish Australian realtor who in a post on Facebook accused his competitor of cheating his employee, or was it his employees?

Late on 22 October last year, Anthony Zadravic posted that another real estate agent was “selling multi million $ (sic) homes in Pearl Beach but can’t pay his employees superannuation” (Guardian, October 10, 2021).

In the absence of an apostrophe before the “s” to indicate a singular employee, a judge concluded that the Facebook accusation suggested that the practice of withholding contributions to the employees' superannuation funds was widespread, and refused to dismiss the case. Even if the damages awarded were minimal, the court costs were likely to be at least $160,000. 

I feel a bit sorry for the poor fellow. What provoked this folly? Had his rival called him a horse’s arse, with the apostrophe in the right place? And surely the post in question was more likely to do damage to the reputation of the writer than the rival. 

For more on these punctuation errors, and to see other posts, consult the Table of Contents.

 

The Endangered Adverb

“Breathe easily,” I said to the sign erected by an institution that cared not for the adverb. But the battle was lost 48 years ago in the ParticipACTION campaign which shamed us all into getting fit by equating the health of a 60-year-old Swede with a 30-year-old Canadian. And the slogan for this campaign?

Breathe Easier

It rankled us at the time. I was horrified. Here was I trying to teach grammar and the Federal Government was promoting this error. Was it not possible to use the comparative form of the adverb? Didn’t the government care about the grammatical health of the nation!  “Breathe more easily,” they might have said, and given comfort to beleaguered adverbs everywhere, already on the endangered parts-of-speech list.

Now the adverb is threatened more than ever before. Act responsible! Eat healthy! Shine brighter! Book easier, travel happier! But some of us refuse to give up. My friend Paul has a driving manual on his desk, entitled, “Drive Smart”, on the cover of which he has inked in the “ly”. 

That Ugly Word Again

 And the Vancouver School Board said in a statement that the new curriculum mandates “an inclusive model of education,” so “all students will be able to participate in the curriculum fulsomely”. (Globe and Mail, 16 June, 2021)

In these words, the school board attempted to justify their cutting of programs for gifted children. Anyone who speaks like that does not inspire confidence in the claim he is making, does he? Full of jargon, it’s the kind of vague and general answer a politician gives to a specific question. But especially loathsome is the use of the word “fulsomely”.

The adjective “fulsome” instead of “full” is ugly enough, but the use of the adverb instead of “fully” is even worse. As an adjective, in a cliché like “fulsome praise”, for example, the words might have slipped out from the speaker’s ready vocabulary of hackneyed phrases, but the adverb on its own must have been deliberately chosen. Why?

There are many reasons never to use the word in any form.

It is used frequently by politicians and others who are trying to impress.

It is confusing. Is it being used in its commonly misused sense of “full” or its original meaning of “excessive” or “cloying”?

It is not plain language. Its use is disrespectful to an audience hoping for clear answers.

To delve more fulsomely into the misuse of this festering sore of a word, but at your own risk, see A Fulsome Consultation.