[yamtaddle]

Sure, it has a history. Any use that is described as incorrect has a history, else it wouldn't come up. Is it distracting? Is there another word that perfectly replaces it, is understood by practically all English speakers, and that's not distracting? Yes and yes, so: "to be composed of" should be preferred. I further doubt, very much, that the choice to substitute "to be comprised of" is an informed one in very nearly all cases—its presence is a "smell", if you will, which does mean it conveys some information, but most of the time that information is not something that the person using it is trying to express, which makes it a mistake.

I care less about this one than others, though, since there's little risk of this replacing the ordinary use of the word and making the language less expressive (as in the case of "envious" vs "jealous"). "Avoid doing this" remains good advice, but it's not so bad as errors go. I mainly brought it up as an example of incorrect use surpassing correct use.

It's in a similar class to using "X and I" where it should be "X and me". It causes little harm, most of the time, as far as hindering communication, but getting it right is still preferable to getting it wrong, which means that any decent guide will classify it as a mistake, unless (as is always the case) one means to commit the error, for some reason. That's the case despite the incorrect-I error having, I'm sure, a longer and more widespread history than "to be comprised of"—the history doesn't save it from being something to avoid. Maybe some day it will.

[DangitBobby]

Cool. Words are defined by how people use them, not the other way around. People have been using it enough for the "official" definition to have expanded to include your pet peeve usage, and is undeniably actually correct usage no matter how many paragraphs you type out having no relevance to the matter. Complaining about it won't accomplish anything, it's over. Unless your goal is to try to change the definition of "incorrectly" to mean "in ways I don't like", which would be really surprising given the rest of your comments.

[yamtaddle]

Descriptions and sound advice needn't be in agreement.

[EDIT] Sorry, that was needlessly curt. I don't think we actually disagree that much anyway—I'm not advancing prescriptivism, and this issue doesn't bother me that much (I was just using it as an example!), though I do notice it. I can find support in the dictionary for my use of "incorrect" here— :-) —but it was probably an incorrect word to have used to express what I was getting at in the first place, and my poor choice there may have been the cause of much of this exchange.