Comments on: What’s Wrong with This Phrase?

By: Joshua E.

Joshua E. — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 10:34:20 +0000

I agree with Mr. Douglass, and his examples highlight perfectly the logical foundation of his (correct) answer. It’s not that 9 percent of the Senate consists of women, but that the Senate consists of 9 percent women [and 91 percent Martians, or whatever].

By: Jeremy Douglass

Jeremy Douglass — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:48:28 +0000

Fun question - I must be procrastinating.

As with I agree with 2. (e. fiction) that percent refers to something specific, consists refers to an aggregate. Nothing can “consist” of something specific - compare:

A car is made of an engine. Wrong.
Cars are made of engines. Wrong.
Cars are made of engines and other stuff. Right.
The Senate consists of 9% women, 90% men, and 1% other. Right.

By: joe

joe — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:03:29 +0000

It could be correct. :) That is, if you take the percentage female and percentage male of each member of the senate and averaged them, it might just be that, on average, 9% of each Senator is female.

By: Jeremy hunsinger

Jeremy hunsinger — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:06:12 +0000

That would get ‘awkward’ and ‘word choice’ for me To consist is to participate in its essence as a part of its whole, but inseparable, and as such the participants, such as the relationship between the people dwelling in a home and the home. the home consists of those that make it their home. Without those people, it is not the same home, the essence changes, and thus the home changes. It makes little to no sense to use a percentage in terms of consist either, or to use consist in terms of senators, though it would be fine to say that the senate consists of a location and the senators that occupy it.

That is my take. The proper construction to me would be “9% of senators are women” or “Women make up 9% of the Senate”.

By: liz

liz — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 04:37:03 +0000

My first instinct would be that the sentence’s problem is that there were only nine freaking women in the Senate. Now we’re up to a practically even sixteen out of one hundred, though, so I don’t know what I’m complaining about. [/bitter sarcasm]

Seriously though, I’m no a grammar person, but that definitely sounds wrong.

By: Jason Mittell

Jason Mittell — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:19:03 +0000

Two problems - like you wrote, the phrase suggests that 9% of the whole include (not exclusively) women, while the point s/he was probably trying to make is about the 91% excluding women (which is not actually mentioned).

Second, I think “consist” is better for lists of things or ingredients ("the batter consists of milk, sugar, and flour"), not a single item or a part of a whole ("one part of the batter consists of milk").

I think other oddity is that the Senate is a 100 member body, so percentages are kind of redundant!

By: e. fiction

e. fiction — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:13:59 +0000

I’m no grammarian, but I’ll take a stab at the question.

I agree that it’s jarring to use “percent” in conjunction with “consists,” and if we replace “X percent” with “X out of one hundred” (and the per-one-hundred ratio works neatly in this particular case) I think the source of awkwardness becomes clear: “Nine out of one hundred [members] of the Senate consist[s] of women.” Instead, the sentence should be something like, “9% of Senate members are women.”

Of course, the real issue is that at the particular college where you teach, the student in question was most likely saying something like, “Anyone who mistakenly believes that we live in an age of gender equality should consider that only 9% of Senate members are women”; at the school where I teach, I’m just as likely to get a paper that says, “A whole 9% of the Senate is female, so I’m not sure what you crazy feminists are still complaining about.”

Oops, did I type that out loud?

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:57:07 +0000

Well it’s true that 9% of the Senate consists of women (and nothing but); however, it’s a pretty ungainly phrase. I’m not sure it’s wrong, but it is definitely awkward.

I’d probably say “women constitute 9% of the Senate” instead.