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)
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