I Must Have Learned Something

We've just started watching "Shattered Glass," a movie about Stephen Glass, the reporter who wrote a whole bunch of faked stories for the New Republic. At the beginning, there's some purported facts about the magazine printed in a typewriter-style font on the screen. One line goes something like:

"At the time, the magazine's staff was comprised of 15 writers/editors."

Sheesh, a grammatical error in a movie about journalists. No one ever accused Stephen Glass of being a poor writer.

For those not put through a class with Marda Dunsky, the whole comprises the parts and the parts compose the whole. Thus, that sentence should use either the active-tense "comprised" or passive-tense "was composed of." Because if you convert that sentence to active tense, it would say "the magazine's staff comprised 15 writers/editors."

Tsk, tsk. In a journalism movie, too.