Avian Gamers Network

If you beat me, then you win, I lose.

I used to think that only a lot of my computer friends couldn't spell this word. They always spell it loose. Loose is something that is not tight. Now it seems I am seeing this everywhere. My union got the minutes to a management meeting concerning our new contract. Even they used Loose when the should have used Lose. Also seen this misspelled in the newspaper. Apparently they use spell check without grammar check.

What exactly is so hard about this word? Perhaps some of you "loosers" could explain it to me?

Yes this is a joke I still loove you all.

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My name is Tobias Smith and I approved this post.

This is because the "ou" sound in lose is usually spelt with a double "o". If you follow normal convention, lose should be pronounced low-s as in the word hose.

It is therefore common, especially in young children when taught these conventions, to spell lose as loose. There are obviously a number of people who don't grow out of this habit.

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I never could understand why this was so commonly misspelled either. I guess I'll never no.

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What am I playing now?: The waiting game

I think a lot of errors in spelling and grammar these days (especially in print media) stem from the simple fact that people don't read anymore. Most people do not read books, and while some do read magazines, they don't read very much, and certainly not regularly. The more you read, the larger of a vocabularly you tend to have, the better you tend to spell, and the smarter you become when dealing with and manipulating language.

I used to read a lot more than I do currently, and a good portion of the fall-off can be attributed to WoW and SWG. I suppose college also shares some of the blame, as there was just less overall time to read, and I fell out of habit with it.

Of course, this is just a general hypothesis on my part, and certainly I know a lot of smart folks who don't have spelling or grammar issues and who rarely read much of anything, aside from what they find on the web. But I do think it is a trend that has a correlation with the observations here.

I can't think of the last time I looked at a news article or something in a magazine or paper that didn't have some glaring punctuation, grammatical, or spelling errors. I tend to have a few crop up in my posts here and on other sites, but I never edit my own work. I never even read back over it, and I never use spell checks on anything, unless it is a formal proposal for management at work. I generally find that spell and grammar checks have me clicking on "ignore" 96% of the time, and take up more time than me just reading over it to begin with. So I take the lazy way out, and never worry about it. Most of the time, I'm pretty darn close.

There are people on the other side of things too, who just seem to be poor spellers. Cyrus can't spell to save his life, and relies on heavy proof-reading and spell checks. He's one incredibly smart guy, and quite well read, I believe. Its just one of those things.

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I always thought it'd be desert and dessert...

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TheMole
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Well, don't ask me why but it happens that most people I know make less spelling errors in learned languages than in their native one. (French in this case)
I guess then, than being immersed in one language leads you to hear things that you will try to transcribe to writing. And without a proper grasp of grammar, you will inevitably make mistakes.

As said above, reading helps, but english has always been prone to spelling mistakes, especially since those are sometimes greatly publicised: "u" for "you", 4 for "for", etc. Also, the mobile phone text messages don't help. They are now old enough so some youth always knew them and always used phonetic style writing.

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Sluggy Dev'lya-Master Smuggler-Politician
Former Mayor of Avian City

You're right there Sluggy about the thing with missspelling more on own language than a learned language.

But on the other hand it took me several years to learn how to spell "which". Usually I spelled "witch"... so sorry for the wrong writings.

p.s. If I still spell it wrong do me a favor and correct me...

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1st Feb 2008

In MMO's, lose is ranked right up there with ridiculous. I can't believe how many people spell it rediculous. Or, the very definition of irony, spelling retarded as retarted when calling someone that in the general chat.