Kibbitzer 16 | Composing or compiling information? |
This Kibbitzer is based on an extract from the thesis of a Chinese-speaking student of Social Science.
| Original | Revision |
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| I composed basic information from a thorough survey of the available litrerature, asking the same questions about each case in order to confirm comparability. | I compiled the basic information for this study from a thorough survey of the available literature, asking the same questions about each case in order to ensure comparability.
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All three of the suggested corrections are worth some attention: the one which we focussed on during the one-to-one session was the possibility of substituting another verb such for compose. The first task was to work out why compose seems inappropriate in this context. The following citations taken from New Scientist show typical contexts of compose (excluding be composed of):
1 f it you do not understand. So you compose a brief question, again on your computer,
2 a well-known author". Or they can compose a first letter home from a hapless Contin
3 Maurice Ravel, who composed Bolero and other classics, suffered an u
4 ece of music called Wines Lullaby, composed by Fujihara. The wine tasted better too,
5 confidence that he could not have composed less than two or three hundred lines". O
6 available telescopes and lenses to compose more pictorial photographs. He also on oc
7 ed person to control a computer or compose music. Breaking a beam activated a cursor
8 nterest, lock the focus, and then compose their picture - a process no quicker than
What is common to all the citations is the idea of creation in the sense of invention, whether literary/linguistic (1, 2, 5), musical (3, 4, 7), or pictorial (6, 8).
That observation immediately shows why compose is inappropriate in this context, for if there is one thing which academics should NOT do, that is to invent their information/data!
Various possibilities occurred to us as replacements for compose, rangng from collect, to compile. We decided on compile on the basis of citations such as
the following. With information as the object - see also citation 1 - there seems to be very little difference between collect and compile, and much the same seems to be true with objects such as data, estimates, evidence and figures:
1 led analysis of the information it compiles in its National Registry for Radiation S
2 ersity has cogently argued. He has compiled data on the fortunes of marine fauna ove
3 ished a book of emission estimates compiled, country by country, from available stat
4 fishy flavours. Yeo and Shibamoto compiled evidence from four comparative studies o
5 t represents. According to figures compiled by the Association of University Teacher
However, the difference in meaning between collect and compile appears with objects such as inventory (6), table (7), plan (8), review (9) and report (10). These cannot be used as readily with collect as they can with compile, pointing to the important feature of the latter verb that compilation involves an element of organisation and arrangement of the collected data. For that reason, we agreed that compile might be the better choice in this context.
6 pectorate of Pollution (HMIP) will compile an annual inventory. This will be include
7 ation of growth. In a league table compiled by the Philadelphia-based Institute for
8 ith an Asian-owned company to help compile a "forestry management plan" for a loggin
9 usly endangered in a recent review compiled by the conservation committee of the Eur
10 cury's stock in trade. The report, compiled by researchers at the Los Alamos Nationa
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17th February 1997 | Consultant: Tim Johns |
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