Comprise, Consist Of, and Be Composed Of: Whole and Parts Without Confusion

The whole comprises the parts; the whole consists of the parts; the whole is composed of the parts.

The committee comprises twelve members.
The committee consists of twelve members.
The committee is composed of twelve members.

The classic error is adding of after active comprise

In careful formal English, prefer comprises twelve members, not comprises of twelve members. The passive form is comprised of is common in contemporary usage, especially in North American English, but many editors still prefer consists of or is composed of when maximum formality is required.

Think in terms of direction

Twelve members compose the committee reverses the grammatical direction: the parts compose the whole. This is less common in ordinary prose but useful for understanding why comprise and compose are not interchangeable.

When editing dense academic sentences, lexical precision matters as much as grammatical compression. Pair this lesson with Advanced Self-Editing and the discussion of Nominalisation Overload.