Word Choice Comprise vs. Compose

Word Choice Comprise vs. Compose Word Choice: Comprise vs. Compose At this rate, it won’t be long before even pedants  give up on the difference between â€Å"comprise† and â€Å"compose.† After all, â€Å"comprise† is frequently misused, particularly by people writing â€Å"comprised of† when they mean â€Å"composed of.† But it’s our job as Guardians of Language (it sounds snazzier than â€Å"proofreaders†) to defend against grammatical abuses. So, in this post, we explain  how â€Å"comprise† and â€Å"compose† should be used. Comprise (To Contain or Include) The verb â€Å"comprise† means â€Å"contain† or â€Å"consist of,† so it is used when describing a whole that includes multiple parts or components: The United States comprises fifty states. Here, â€Å"comprises† shows that the United States (as a whole) includes fifty individual states. Typically, when using â€Å"comprise,† the whole should come before the parts in the sentence. Compose (To Make Up or Constitute) While also a verb, â€Å"compose† means â€Å"make up† or â€Å"constitute.† As such, we could invert the example above to say: Together, fifty states compose the United States as a republic. In this sentence, the focus is on how the fifty individual states combine to form the United States as a country. Those stars arent just there to look pretty. [Photo: Jnn13]We also see why â€Å"composed of† is acceptable while â€Å"comprised of† isn’t, since â€Å"compose† focuses on the parts that constitute the whole. We can therefore rewrite the example sentence again as: The United States is composed of fifty states. More generally, â€Å"compose† can also mean â€Å"create an artistic work† (particularly music or a painting), or even â€Å"calm oneself† (where its a variation of â€Å"composure,† meaning tranquility). Comprise or Compose? The problem with â€Å"comprised of† is that â€Å"comprise† is the opposite of â€Å"compose,† not a synonym. In short, they can’t be used interchangeably. One good way to remember this is the following: The whole comprises the parts; the parts compose the whole. Here we see how both terms refer to how something is constituted, but from opposite directions; while â€Å"comprise† describes the components as belonging to a whole, â€Å"compose† describes the whole as constituted by its parts.