One Man's Quest To Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake

An anonymous reader writes with this Fascinating profile of one particular Wikipedia editor Giraffedata (a 51-year-old software engineer named Bryan Henderson), who has spent the last seven years correcting only the incorrect use of "comprised of" on Wikipedia. Using a code to crawl for uses of "comprised of" throughout all of Wiki's articles, he'll then go in and manually correct them (for example, using "consists of" or "composed of") and has made over 47,000 edits to date.

Comments

Monomania

[war4peace]

Comprised of the ability to withstand the urge of doing anything else but this.

Re:Monomania

[show me altoids]

"He'll then go in and manually corrects them." Slashdot needs this guy to proofread submissions.

Re:Monomania

[jellomizer]

I don't get why we tolerate people that have vices that are actually far more harmful. But an improper use of spelling or grammar, causes people with such an uproar.

My personal hypothesis bases on no facts whatsoever. Is that teachers in the attempt in instill proper grammar and other language skills, actually went to far and caused people to see grammar and language as a moral issue, and not just a skill, to insure that ideas are commonly understood.

Many of these people going after language issues, are often just fighting the natural migration of language where the meaning is well understood and isn't affecting peoples understanding of the information.

Re:Monomania

[eyrieowl]

Hopefully that wasn't the only grammar error you picked up on in that post.... :)

Re:Monomania

[Anonymous Coward]

Irregardless of you're opinion its still a waist of time for all intensive purposes.

I guess he missed this one

[Marginal Coward]

he'll then go in and manually corrects them

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Re: Oh, thank the gods. . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, very crazy of him to be focused on the cause of his own crazy rather than yours!

and one crawler, comprised of other rules, followi

[Registered Coward v2]

undoing all his edits.

Re:ATM machine ..?

[Half-pint HAL]

It's a common enough idiom.

There are many common idioms that are used incorrectly in conversation or casual writing. But that doesn't mean they should be used in formal writing, such as an encyclopedia.

Well met, friend, for thou speakst great sooth! Many people have I encountered who are such dullards as to employ incorrectly the English tongue. 'Tis tragedy of the vtmost that the youth of our times know not how the language should properly speak itself. A gay fellow would I be were my fellow man to renew his acquaintance with the King's English.

Alas! but I must forsake thy gentle companie, for mine friends await me in a local hostelrie, and so must I away! Parting is such sweet sorry. Anon, good sir, anon!

Re:One man's rebuttal

[NotDrWho]

And I will join your allied fight against Grammar National Socialism by conducting a concurrent invasion of the beaches of literature and retaking ground from the fascists who mistakenly think that it is grammatically incorrect to begin sentences with conjunctions. And we will win this fight!

Re:My pet peeve:

[slinches]

Oh good, I should be safe on that one. I use "condiment" in place of both of those.

Re:Edit count whoring

[Zordak]

I will write a script that locates ambiguous usage of commas, and will replace them with the correct oxford comma usage.

Sir, that is uncouth, uncivilized and incorrect.

There are legitimate grammar and usage debates, with cogent arguments on either side. But the Oxford Comma is the One True Way. The best argument I've ever heard against it is, "Well, it saves a few drops of ink on the printed page." Anti-Oxford Comma heathens should be drawn, quartered, and burned at the stake for befouling the language.