I happened to be watching CBS News Sunday Morning a couple weeks back when I caught a ridiculous story about a man who made it his mission in life to change every reference to “comprised of” on Wikipedia to “composed of” (read more about this at: http://www.npr.org/2015/03/12/392568604/dont-you-dare-use-comprised-of-on-wikipedia-one-editor-will-take-it-out). Apparently, some dogmatic stiffs believe that “comprised of” represents a passive verb and conflicts with the word “comprises”. If it sounds like I’m not giving a good explanation of this moronic concept it’s because there is no good explanation. Most of the internet seems to have come to the same conclusion: the “comprised of” guy is on shaky ground at best. I’m half tempted to find out how he changed all those wiki listings and change them back to the proper “comprised of”.

Language is fluid. It has whatever meaning the day gives it. If suddenly tomorrow everyone decided that “truzzleflufifng” was a real word that had actual meaning, it would have meaning and would eventually be incorporated into the English language. Case in point: I’m writing this post using language that is strictly non-compliant with Middle English strictures. Am I doing it wrong? Should we version roll back to the language that gave us this diddy: “whan that aprille with his shoures soote” (from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales).

There’s been more ink spent on the diatribes against the use of the words “got” and “get” than went into the first full run of the King James Bible (itself a host of odd word choices), but there’s a decent chance that the English teachers of tomorrow will have lost their bias against that little word. And maybe they are just afraid of mildly offensive phrases like “He got shot” or “I got laid.” The idea behind these theories is that the word “was” is imbued with magical powers that can save event eh weakest and most rudimentary sentences from falling into triteness. Well, so much for logic, sense, reason, and decency. I will admit that the g-word sends that aristocratic shiver down my spine and I can’t even remember the last time I said it myself.

But I think this rigidity can sometimes lead us into stale, safe writing that does not explore the boundaries of language. For instance, A Clockwork Orange is a good example of a book that rewrote English with made up slang and broken phrases. The result was quite interesting, even if it was not completely English, because it gave the book a unique texture that transported you to the land of Droogs and Mestos.

In a similar vein, using the phrase “comprised of” is not the great affront to the English language that we have been led to believe, and falling into the mindset that we must excise all reference to these inventions is something that a good writer should stay away from. Otherwise, our time will be entirely comprised of trying to reform our thoughts into orthodox phrase-vessels.