to post this spelling correction? LOSE to mean the loss of something

[Horsie]

I'm on a public-service mission to correct one of the world's most common misspellings. I've seen it thousands and thousands of times online. I think it must be the most misspelt word in the world. Saw it twice today just on Mumsnet.

No shade AT ALL. I literally want to help people look better in writing.

Here goes:

To lose something is spelt LOSE and not loose. Loose only ever means not tight, or to let something go, like a horse. I turned my horse loose. I hope I never lose him.

I'm losing the will to live.
I always lose competitions.
That person is a loser.

My jeans are loose.
My ring goes loosely over my knuckle.
I'm a loser wearing loose jeans.
I always lose my ring in the pool because it becomes loose.

I never realised how commonly this word was misspelt until the internet. I suppose because "lose" does sound like a double "O" with its oooo sound (as opposed to rhyming with hose). That's probably where the confusion comes in, and the wrong spelling is being perpetuated millions and millions of times because of the internet.

I wish someone like JK Rowling with a huge reach would tweet the correct spellings, as a public service. No one likes to look bad in writing.

So there you have it, folks. Write it down a hundred times.

Lose
Lose
Lose
Lose

LOOSE

I train agentic models.

You think this shit doesn’t drive me bonkers?

This is the one that grates on me!

😂

I don't agree. Anyone who speaks a simple sentence like "I'm going to the supermarket" is using grammar to make themselves understood. I don't know why there's a perception that grammar is this exclusive thing that only the highly educated know. It's not as if people who aren't highly educated say things like "I the to go supermarket," is it?

Ahhh, no, specific/pacific is hard. I have a lot of sympathy for that one. The "sspahcif" sound is fooking weird. My realisation that "specific" in print was the word pronounced "sspahcif-ic" lagged way behind the rest of my reading as a child. Unless you're someone who reads a lot, I can 100 percent see why people think it's pacific. The spff sound is just nuts.

While we’re doing orthographical pedantry, please could we also address ‘lay’ and ‘lie’.

I lie down. = I place myself in a more or less horizontal position. Present tense.
I lay down. = I placed myself in a more or less horizontal position. Past tense.
I lay down an object. = I place an object on a surface and let go of it. Present tense.
I laid down an object. = I placed an object on a surface and let go of it. Past tense.
If I were a hen, I might say ‘I lay an egg daily’. Or I might say ‘I laid an egg yesterday’. ‘Lay’ in this sense means to produce eggs from out of the body.

”I had to lay down” does not make sense. It appears to suggest that the writer was forced to expel fluffy feathers from their nether regions.

I shall now climb down from my soap box.

I am 100% behind you on your mission! When you’ve sorted out lose v loose, can you target “would have” “could of” etc next please?

Phones do autocorrect for that so I don’t understand why I see it written online with such frequency!!

This annoys the shit out of me too. I wish people would learn to spell

Lose as in lost
Loose as in noose

Easy as that!

It is helpful seeing lose and loss against each other with one o.

It's like the saying "champing at the bit"
A lot of people (my husband included) say "chomping at the bit"
Or "if you think that you've got another think coming" is correct, as opposed to the more popular "you've got another thing coming"
Does my head in. But not as much as Mils friend telling her "your house is just bricks and water"

Just seen another poster refer to the "Me To" movement.

@TeaAndStrumpets in my head I can’t help but read that “me toh”

My particular bugbear is people using ; when they mean : It's rife in my own organisation. Stop doing that!

This comes up quite often and I get to mention again the gravestone I once saw that said "it hurt to loose you so soon".

I'd say it does matter if people are fucking it up on something designed to be around and legible for a few centuries

I agree wholeheartedly with you @Horsie.
(Or is it wholeheartedly agree?)
I'm not classed as well educated because my schooling stopped at 16 . (This wasn't unusual back in the Seventies when I started work.)
However, my grammar and punctuation is good.
I also despair at "of" used instead of "have"
I get they sound the same when contracted to " 've" . But who says "I of to stop ranting now?"
😂
Ah, I feel better now.

To be honest I think it's a lost cause - it's so common and almost becoming the norm!

Don't loose sleep over it 😄

Definitely and defiantly is another one

Oh, come off it. OP isn't correcting someone who has come looking for help or saying that they are in some way inferior if they get this wrong. We live in an age when there is increased emphasis on grammar and spelling in schools, and we do our children no favours if we don't give them a good example.

I think me to what?? Like it's on a to-do list....Me to take cat to vet. Dh to tidy garage etc. Or maybe poster has reminded herself Me to challenge the Patriarchy today, which to be honest I could applaud!

Sadly I imagine it's Autocorrect. I turned off my spellchecking thingy because it thinks it knows better than me!

The problem is that that quote just isn't true. The simple fact is that using the right grammar and spelling is just basic politeness and avoids confusion in what you are saying. If you say that you are loosing your trousers, for instance, do you mean that you've made them loose or that they are coming down accidentally? To use another well-known example, there is a clear and important difference between saying that someone "eats shoots and leaves" and "eats, shoots and leaves".

Even if one particular example is not ambiguous, the constant use of incorrect constructions and spellings makes things awkward and difficult to read. Dyslexia and genuine typos aside, it's not difficult to get it right - in fact, it's often easier.

@Horsie another bad one which I often see on mumsnet is advice and advise!! people should say the sentence to themselves to find the correct spelling of the word they wish to use!

would the correct word not be loosening your trousers?? loosing is not even a word in the way people are tryiing to use it so people should never be using it!

However, my grammar and punctuation is good.

Oh dear. Muphry's law strikes again.

Well, yes, if that is what you mean. But when you use "loose" instead of "lose" you leave it uncertain. Plus, of course, it's a different pronunciation.