Can 'include' introduce all the parts?

I suspect 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.

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.” Where do I stand on all this? I sum it up in my recent column.

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