Tuesday, February 24, 2009

More Breathless Insight From The Quarantine Zone

For whatever reason, over the past couple of weeks I've seen at least a half dozen different examples of people using "compliment" when they meant "complement" in online posts (eg. "Our strengths really compliment each other.") Is it really all that hard to remember that the former means "to praise" while the latter means "to complete, or make whole"?

This latest addition may, in fact, end up joining other notable "sadly common faux pas"s like:
  • "it's" for the possessive form ("The dog licked it's tail.")
  • "irregardless" (negating an already negative term)
  • "could of/should of/would of" etc.
  • and others I'm too woolly-headed to think of right now

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