Do you have two favorite snacks that go well together? You know, like they’re complementary? I’m thinking crackers and cheese. Ruffles and Lipton Onion Soup dip. Hummus and pita. Those are my favorite complementary snacks. I wonder if that’s what the Yahoo! Travel writer meant:
Do you think you have to pay for the snacks — or are they complimentary?
Get your free flavors right here! These complimentary flavors pair well with each other. Heck, they go so well to get you might even call them complementary. Unless you write for Yahoo! Screen:
I’d like to compliment the writer for Yahoo! Sports‘ “Ball Don’t Lie.” But I can’t. This one homophonic mix-up prevents me from extending a compliment:
The American Heritage Dictionary offers this usage note on complement and compliment:
Complement and compliment, though quite distinct in meaning, are sometimes confused because they are pronounced the same. As a noun, complement means “something that completes or brings to perfection” (The antique silver was a complement to the beautifully set table); used as a verb it means “to serve as a complement to.” The noun compliment means “an expression or act of courtesy or praise” (They gave us a compliment on our beautifully set table), while the verb means “to pay a compliment to.”
Professional writers represent not only themselves, but also their employer. When writers make mistakes, it reflects poorly on them and the company. In the case of Yahoo!, its female-focused Yahoo! Shine seems to have overlooked that principle.
Writers on Shine are free to ignore the basic tenets of language and traditional journalism. They’re unhindered by the rules of grammar and punctuation and the tyranny of the competent editor. The result is inaccurate, unreliable, and illiterate writing.
Case in point: This article from a Shine staffer. The period belongs after the right parenthesis. (It applies to the sentence and not to the words within the parentheses, which don’t form a sentence.)
This sounds like an interesting program at the Mayo Clinic. It hands out compliments while dispensing medical advice. Love it!
(The writer made the unpardonable sin of changing the program’s name, which is Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Those folks at the Mayo Clinic know their homophones.)
What do you think? Would you trust anything you read on Shine, even if you can read anything you want?
OK, she’s not even trying to spell Matthew McConaughey correctly:
I think Yahoo! rations punctuation marks and this writer has used up her daily allowance of comma:
Perhaps the champagne goes well with shopping, though I suspect the Yahoo! omg! meant it was free or complimentary:
Terribly Write 