Thursday, May 28, 2009

Loose and lose

Ah the vagaries of the English language. Loose, loss and lose, there and their – so easy to use the wrong word when you are typing something out. Get it wrong and the spell checker doesn’t pick it up because it isn’t misspelt just misused.

It seems that so many children in schools mix these up, that exam board no longer concern themselves about the issue. Even at university it is accepted that this is a common mistake.

Thankfully my eagle eyed scouts spot the errors in my posts and let me know so I can make amends. Now it isn’t the loose bull that loses the fight, the loss is the bullfighter’s.

PS I promise to try harder in future.

1 comment:

Pete said...

At the risk of sounding schoolteachery, I've given up on pointing out your lose/loose slippages as they are so prevalent!

To be honest, this is a 'confusable' which is now so utterly ubiquitous as to be a genuine etymological change. If enough people get it 'wrong' then wrong becomes right. The majority wins on language, and maybe that's a healthy thing.