I don’t like to think of myself as a nit-picker, and I do appreciate how the Web democratizes content… I certainly don’t expect or even want bloggers to have editors, for heaven sake. But some sites purport to publish content professionally, and I find it irksome when they let copy through without a good old-fashioned proofread.
Take an article posted last Friday on InternetNews.com, for example: Windows Live to Share Site with Office Live. It’s a topic I’m interested in, because I’ll be working on documentation related to these services later this year. Near the top of the story I encountered a pet peeve of mine: the misuse of “complimentary.” The article states:
The move is meant to encourage users to take advantage of a broader range of various Microsoft Live services as well as emphasize that the two sets of services are complimentary.
If I’m complimentary to you, I’m paying you a compliment, I’m being courteous. What the two sets of services are is complementary. They are like 2 halves that make a whole; they complete each other. The two words derive from separate roots; one stemming from the notion of courtesy, the other referring to the notion of completion. Free tickets to a show? Those are complimentary. Blue and orange? Those are complementary (because together they reflect the full spectrum).
Why does this matter? Because words have meaning, and heritage. Slip-ups like this indicate that people don’t appreciate the rich texture of our language, which is sad for me. I realize that not everyone delights in language as do I and my fellow English-majors. But when I come across things like this, I find myself wanting to start a crusade. Not a holier-than-thou, brow-beating crusade, mind you – but a quixotic one. A crusade that wields words not as weapons that stab at “correct usage,” but as teaching devices that point toward our collective imagination.
So here’s my volley for today: complimentary = courtesy; complementary = completion. Interestingly, if you follow the etymology back far enough, they actually come full circle, since both (according to my 10th Edition Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary) stem from the Latin complēre, to complete. Complementary has direct lineage to its Latin route, but complimentary stems from a branch via the Spanish cumplir, to complete – as in performing what is due (comply). It morphed from that to the Spanish cumplimiento, and then the Italian compliment, before arriving in English as compliment in the middle of the 17th Century. I think it’s cool that this gives us some historical perspective on culture. In Spain at least, fulfilling one’s obligation to another was the genesis of courtesy.