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Anonymous Posted 12 years ago
Grammar

Use of preposition

A lot of verbal and written output nowadays includes the verb form "comprises" followed by the preposition "of". When I went to school this was incorrect. What is the general view now?
  

Top answer

In my view, it is still incorrect. The Corpus of Contemporary American Usage lists 6264 citations for consists of , 1204 for comprises , and only 3 for comprises of . The British National Corpus lists 2124 citations for consists of , 883 for comprises , and 15 for comprises of .

— Blue Jay

  • In my view, it is still incorrect.
  • The Corpus of Contemporary American Usage lists 6264 citations for consists of , 1204 for comprises , and only 3 for comprises of .
  • The British National Corpus lists 2124 citations for consists of , 883 for comprises , and 15 for comprises of .
  • 5 times the size of BNC's) The Corpus of Global Web based English lists 34,186 citations for consists of (of which 5,327 came from the US and 5,310 from the UK), 12,142 for comprises (1,269 from the US and 1,989 from the UK), and 2,232 for comprises of (63 from the US and 276 from the UK.
  • The largest contributor is India, with 286 citations).
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3 Answers
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In my view, it is still incorrect.
The Corpus of Contemporary American Usage lists 6264 citations for consists of, 1204 for comprises, and only 3 for comprises of.
The British National Corpus lists 2124 citations for consists of, 883 for comprises, and 15 for comprises of. (Note that COCA's d
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Blue JayThe Corpus of Contemporary American Usage lists 6264 citations for consists of, 1204 for comprises, and only 3 for comprises of.The British National Corpus lists 2124 citations for consists of, 883 for comprises, and 15 for comprises of. (Note that COCA's database is 4.5 times the size of BNC's)The Corpus of Global Web based English lists 34,186 citations for cons
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Also, this is an American Heritage Dictionary usage note that I usually refer students to:

Usage Note:

The traditional rule states that the whole comprises the parts and the partscompose the whole. In strict usage: The Union comprises 50 states. Fifty states compose (or constitute or make up) the Union. Even though careful writers often maintain this
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