A Word, Please: Include this rule on your list of grammar musts

Writers, like restaurant patrons and grocery store customers, hold secret meetings to decide when to act as a herd: A slow restaurant suddenly gets busy? That’s no accident. It’s a conspiracy. Ditto that for long lines at the supermarket that materialize in an instant even though the place was a ghost town for the last hour.

So I’m not crazy to believe that every writer I edit held a meeting to decide they would all misuse “include” at the same time. It’s the only possible explanation for the sudden rash of sentences like “The sandwich ingredients include bread, peanut butter and jelly.”

The problem is as much about logic as it is about grammar. In my culinarily simplistic world, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have exactly three ingredients. Nobody’s getting creative with pesto aioli or salted caramel. Yet “include” seems to suggest that an incomplete list will follow — merely a few examples of the bounty of flavors and textures you’ll find in a PB&J.

According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, “include” means “to take in or comprise as a part of a whole or group.” Personally, I find that a little confusing. But “part of” is clearly central to the meaning. Bread, peanut butter and jelly aren’t “part of” the ingredient list for a sandwich. They’re the whole list. So “include” doesn’t make sense according to this definition.

When “include” isn’t introducing a list, there’s little confusion: “Maria arrived just in time for us to include her in the meeting.” Obviously, people other than Maria were involved. She couldn’t be included in a meeting in which she was the only attendee.

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A lot of language commentators feel strongly that “include” refers to just a subset of a whole, not every part of it. “‘Include,’ which has traditionally introduced a nonexhaustive list, is now coming to be widely misused for ‘consists of,’” says Garner’s Modern American Usage.

But, like all things in language, “include” gets controversial. “There are quite a few commentators,” says Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, “who maintain that ‘include’ should not be used when a complete list of items follows the verb.” This reference book, which is not the same as Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, disagrees. Those commentators, it says, “have somehow reasoned themselves into the notion that with ‘include,’ all the components must not be mentioned, which has never been the case.”

Normally, I side with the most permissive language authority and I do so for a very good reason: No single authority has the right to impose restrictions on the language. The only real bosses of the language are you, me and 1.5 billion other English speakers who mold the language as we speak and write every day. But Merriam’s usage guide doesn’t present any evidence that “include” can introduce a complete list. Instead, the guide seems to be pushing its editors’ own opinion. Plus, Merriam’s usage guide is out of sync with Merriam’s dictionary, weakening their case further.

But for me, the question is moot. My editing projects must conform to Associated Press style, which doesn’t allow “include” to set up a complete list.

“Use include to introduce a series when the items that follow are only part of the total: The price includes breakfast. The zoo includes lions and tigers,” AP says. “Use comprise when the full list of individual elements is given: The zoo comprises 100 types of animals, including lions and tigers.”

So I’ll keep replacing “include” before exhaustive lists, no matter how long the writers’ conspiracy to drive me nuts continues.

June Casagrande is the author of “The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.