Loose vs Lose
 

"If I lose weight my pants will be loose..."

I am having a debate and a friend insists it's "If I loose weight....

Can anyone please confirm...

I see a lot of instances where loose is confused with lose...

Originally Posted by Marathon Mom:
"If I lose weight my pants will be loose..."

I am having a debate and a friend insists it's "If I loose weight....

Can anyone please confirm...

I see a lot of instances where loose is confused with lose...

Yeah, your friend is wrong :). But I wouldn't consider this forum proof. Just use a dictionary. Lose is a verb, loose is an adjective.

It's lose. One easy way to tell: the double vowel "oo" makes the s hard (my pants will be loose.) The single "o" makes it soft (if I lose weight...")

I'm more than happy to spread the knowledge, as I've been a hard-line grammar policewoman all my life. I always read posts here as "I need to LOOSE some weight!" Wait, what do you mean, loosen your weight? ;)

haha that's one of the things that really bugs me. I can't understand how people can't get the right word in the right sentence. Like, their, there, and they're...or wait, weight....it's annoying.

It is Lose weight. Loose is if something doesn't fit properly and is to big. You are correct.

Thank you.....

I wanted to make sure I wasn't losing my mind... and not loosing my mind... ;)

One more confirmation on that.

During weight Loss, you Lose weight, inches, etc. That makes your pants Loose.

Originally Posted by MadelinRose:
It's lose. One easy way to tell: the double vowel "oo" makes the s hard (my pants will be loose.) The single "o" makes it soft (if I lose weight...")

I'm more than happy to spread the knowledge, as I've been a hard-line grammar policewoman all my life. I always read posts here as "I need to LOOSE some weight!" Wait, what do you mean, loosen your weight? ;)

On a related matter ;) I've seen a lot of posts lately about "weighting" oneself in the morning.

yay those things bug me to no end. sometimes if someone's email is bad enough i won't even read it. i'm a word snob i guess. lol.
i have a boss who refuses to properly conjugate verbs and i drives me crazy.
or - if i was here i has a boss who refuse to properly congugate verb and it drive me crazy. lol. she totally weights herself to see if she loosed any wait. lmao.

Originally Posted by lizziep:
yay those things bug me to no end. sometimes if someone's email is bad enough i won't even read it. i'm a word snob i guess. lol.
i have a boss who refuses to properly conjugate verbs and i drives me crazy.
or - if i was here i has a boss who refuse to properly congugate verb and it drive me crazy. lol. she totally weights herself to see if she loosed any wait. lmao.

But capitalization doesn't bother you? ;)

Originally Posted by JulieJ08:
But capitalization doesn't bother you? ;)

:lol3:

Sorry...but that was funny. You walked right into that one. ;)

I'm not bothered by grammatical errors or typos on message boards. I know I've made my fair share--especially when I am in a hurry or tired.

But I do have to brag a bit---my 8 year old daughter showed me a story she wrote the other day and she wrote "a lot"---two words!!! Tears of joy filled my eyes!! If my children learn nothing else from me other than "a lot" is 2 words, my life will still be well-lived.

>sigh of complete happiness<

Originally Posted by midwife:
But I do have to brag a bit---my 8 year old daughter showed me a story she wrote the other day and she wrote "a lot"---two words!!! Tears of joy filled my eyes!! If my children learn nothing else from me other than "a lot" is 2 words, my life will still be well-lived.

>sigh of complete happiness<

Ha, ha! Too funny! I thought I was the only one that wrote it that way.

Typos and the occasional grammatical mistake don't bother me, but there are a handful of things that set my teeth on edge.

Your / You're
They're / Their / There
alot

Also I see a lot of people who use phrases or words that they've heard, but don't really know ... which sometimes results in a funny sentence, but sometimes just annoys me. :D

I guess I'm kind of a grammar/usage snob myself.

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On first read, grammar errors DO bother me. But then I step back and laugh at myself.
I have to remember that we are an international community and many of our members have learned English as a second language.

And - working in a junior high school, I also realize that things are changing when it comes to casual written conversation. Attention to capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar - seems to have diminished.

And - I'm thankful that few people here use words and phrases that have me running to Urban Dictionary to decipher. At least I UNDERSTAND the posts here ;)

I used to be very proud of my spelling and grammar skills (and I often can still access them if I concentrate - luckily for hubby - he asks me to spell at least three words per day). But cognitive problems are common with fibromyalgia (it's a neurotransmitter disorder, so that may account why it messes with so many systems in the brain), and for me that means short term memory problems and difficulty with words, especially finding the right word, and a tendency to spell words phonetically.

I've never had to think twice about two/too; they're, their, and there; alot/a lot; 've/of. Now I make all fairly often (I caught myself not long ago writing I would of - and although I caught it right away I felt like a super bonehead, since it was my personal pet peeve). I can still usually proofread, thankfully as the words still look wrong to me, but when writing I find myself using phonetic spellings for words (embarassingly small and easy words). I wrote tue the other day instead of two. I had just written the word true, so maybe that accounted for the cross in brain signals.

As a result, I definitely am more sympathetic to spelling and grammar errors. Nothing's worse than thinking you're now one of the people you used to roll your eyes at (I think it's now ok to end a sentence with a preposition, if not I guess I should have said, "Nothing's worse than thinking you're now one of the people at which you used to roll your eyes").

I think it does remind me that "pride goeth before a fall," not in that I think my difficulties with grammar are divine retribution, but I definitely do have a different perspective and find myself looking up, instead of down, in a way I wouldn't have expected. It's taught me to be more patient with a lot of things that people do that used to annoy me, because right now I annoy myself more than anyone in the world.

I got enough of this stuff in school....ummm....maybe not.

What about the word irregardless... I mean doesnt that word just cancel itself out ... I dont care about all the other stuff but when I hear someone use a word like that :lol: I just have to laugh! sometimes I have to use the word when I am in a really dumb conversation just to show how stupid something is:lol:

Grammar **** here! I have to work very hard to restrain myself sometimes, but I've made a pact with myself that I won't correct people on message boards.

But..."I could care less" is one of my absolute, all-time most hated phrases! Do the people who type that have basic comprehension? If you could care less, that means you DO care about something! If you COULDN'T care less, then you care the least amount about that thing.

Sorry, stepping down off my soapbox now.

It doesn't bother me too bad when i see gramatical errors on a forum. It does bother me when i see them on road signs, billboards etc..
My husband is English and I love the fact he says 'me' instead of my for the most part.. it's endearing to me.

There is no such word as irregardless. It is regardless. If you have to have a word starting in ir- use irrespective.

I have the nerve to be a grammar snob. I also have the nerve to be a spelling snob.

I have the biggest nerve b/c I AM THE WORST OFFENDER of both!!

Can I share that I cannot use the spell check function on this forum. It told me I need to download something and I didn't. So.... I don't use it.

But seriously, I have these 3fc daydreams of going back into all my old posts and editing them to be correct.

Am I a total DORK?.... YUP!!

LOL, I think most of my posts are edited because I see a typo and cannot let it be :-) ESPECIALLY if it involves homonyms. I can't stand to think someone might think I don't know the difference between it's and its, or to and too. :o Sure, it's on my list of hang-ups to get over, but it's waaaaaaaaaaaay down at the end of the list ;).

"Irregardless" - brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department... can't remember where I heard that, but it made me laugh...

Originally Posted by :
I think most of my posts are edited because I see a typo and cannot let it be :-)

Same here. Probably 90% of my posts show an edit - not because I change the post or added more info, but because I noticed a typo or a grammatical error.

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ha! you got me there- i don't care about capitalization. at all. online. only online emails and posts are fine but that's it. :)

there are a few phrases that people in my every day life use that drive me crazy. one is "per se" the person who uses this does not use it correctly and says it multiple times a day and it makes me want to cry.

the other one is just a peeve- I loathe the term "and what not."

Originally Posted by ray of sunshine:
What about the word irregardless... I mean doesnt that word just cancel itself out ... I dont care about all the other stuff but when I hear someone use a word like that :lol: I just have to laugh! sometimes I have to use the word when I am in a really dumb conversation just to show how stupid something is:lol:

This word might just be my biggest pet peeve in the entire world. I had an English teacher in high school (let me repeat that -- ENGLISH) who would use that word daily. Eventually, a group of us got copies of every different dictionary we could find in the building and confronted her with them -- she just laughed and kept right on using it. She was just a long-term sub at the time, but by now she probably has a permanent position somewhere.. how sad. :p

Oh, and the other thing that REALLY bugs me grammar/spelling-wise, is when the person has easy access to a word, maybe it's even sitting right there on their computer screen, and they still spell it wrong. There's a video game I play where the word "Exalted" comes up now and then, and people throw all kinds of extra letters in it, even though it's right there for them to look at! "Exhaulted?" Seriously?!? Yeah, I grew up going to church, I knew that word when I was 8... but it's still RIGHT THERE for them to see!

lol I'm such a jerk... I keep thinking of more things to whine about... "should of," using "literally" when it's not at all literal (my SIL does that constantly!), and "rediculous" (mostly because someone once argued with me that it was the right way to spell it and I'm still offended that they thought I spelled something wrong). Does anyone remember the episode of Friends where they mention Chandler dumping a girl because she said "supposably"? I'd totally do that, too.

I'm playful with words, but I like to think that's more honorable than just being dumb with words. Some people disagree and think my occasional purposeful grammarlessness is even MORE annoying than honest mistakes. Oh, well. :)

I had a BF very long ago who used to say reinsurance instead of reassurance. Drove me nuts. So did the fact that had to talk about being reinsured so much ;).

Ooh I love this thread! I, too, get very annoyed with the lose/loose thing. I live in TX and something that drives me bonkers is when someone writes ya'll - it is a conjugation of "you all" not "ya all"!! I also take great pride in knowing that cannot is one word but I don't really care if people know that.

Do you all (or y'all) remember when the Limp Bizkit dude said (at the Grammy's or MTV awards or something) that he wasn't in agreeance with the Iraq world. I don't know why but I loved that one - still use it (jokingly) to this day.

Originally Posted by Fressca:
"Irregardless" - brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department... can't remember where I heard that, but it made me laugh...

OH my gosh thats just funny:lol: and using the word per se in the wrong context.... :lol: umm i can picture that conversation.. this is funny

My nails-on-a-chalkboard peeve is when people insist on capitalizing the subject-word they're writing about as if it were a proper noun or proprietary term when it isn't: i.e., "We must learn to eat properly to combat Obesity" (I don't want to steal somebody else's quote, I made that one up myself, but I assume you-all know what I'm referring to)

Originally Posted by asparagus4sale:
Ooh I love this thread! I, too, get very annoyed with the lose/loose thing. I live in TX and something that drives me bonkers is when someone writes ya'll - it is a conjugation of "you all" not "ya all"!! I

Asparagus, I can't help myself... but the grammar geek in me just has to point out that "y'all" is a contraction, not a conjugation... :D

Originally Posted by JulieJ08:
LOL, I think most of my posts are edited because I see a typo and cannot let it be :-) ESPECIALLY if it involves homonyms. I can't stand to think someone might think I don't know the difference between it's and its, or to and too. :o Sure, it's on my list of hang-ups to get over, but it's waaaaaaaaaaaay down at the end of the list ;).

Now y'all(yep, I know it too) know why I don't post much from my PDA. It's a PITA to use the FN button all the time and it can be difficult to tell the difference between ' and , on it. The _ and - look the same also.

Oh gosh I love this thread. :) I'm so glad there are others like me on the board.

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Originally Posted by Fressca:
Asparagus, I can't help myself... but the grammar geek in me just has to point out that "y'all" is a contraction, not a conjugation... :D

LOL - guilty! Haha.

ofourse4 - ikt don't coun t when yo9ur wering 2in HAloween finge4rmails.:p

The lose or loose problem is much worse than you think. It was so bad that we actually programmed the forum to replace instances of loose + weight with lose + weight :lol: Really, try to post it!

lose weight - didn't work!

Oh my goodness! That's fantastic that there's a grammar block on this message board for loosing weight. :lol:

Honestly, the only thing that bothers me is when people switch up homophones or when people conjugate verbs incorrectly. I expect punctuation errors and run-on sentences on a message board because I think people are typing the way that they would speak in casual conversation.

Originally Posted by :
I expect punctuation errors and run-on sentences on a message board because I think people are typing the way that they would speak in casual conversation.

We had a long conversation on another message board I belong to - years ago - about this and someone came up with the description of tuxedo conversation vs. t-shirt conversation. I love the phrases; I think they're very apt.

Tuxedo conversation is what you write at the office or what you speak when you're talking in a business situation. T-shirt conversation is what you write in emails to friends, on message boards, and when you are just talking to your buddies.

I write on message boards much the way I talk in casual conversation ... which is why I use lots of dashes, ellipses, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, etc. My writing (to a large extent) mimics my vocal/speech patterns. (There's also the element that I was raised overseas, so sometimes I get mixed up with punctuation and some spellings because I tend to switch back and forth between British grammar and American grammar.)

However, while message board writing is t-shirt conversation, there are still certain things that make me cringe when I see them - not because I think anyone should be perfect on a message board, but because there are some things that are clearly not typos or that people use repeatedly that show that they really *don't* know the correct version.

And to be honest my "snobbery" is not so much about *them* and what they know or don't know, as an overall sadness that educational standards have fallen that low. It's SO EASY to know the difference between "your" and "you're" ... but SO MANY people don't know it. That should be basic knowledge and no one should get that wrong. Same with "there" and "they're." Or knowing that not every "s" ending needs an apostrophe before it.

Oh, and one final thing - I HATE (loathe, despise) texting jargon used on a message board or in email. I text plenty and use the appropriate abbreviations then, but on a message board, if someone consistently uses things like "ur" and "b4" and other texting abbreviations, I'll stop reading their posts. It annoys me that much.

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Ooh Oooh! :bounce: this is my first chance to vent about some peeves I have with my DH's speech habits.

I love him to death, and I have to really bite my tongue when he does this. Yes, I sometimes fail and correct him. I don't think it will really change the way he talks but I sometimes find myself doing it before I realize I'm speaking.

1. His refusal to use soft G's. the name "Giles" becomes "Guiles" and the word gist "guist".

2. His reference to finding a good "lot" to park in. They are parking spaces! The "lot" is what the spaces are found in.

Petty? Yes. Nitpicky? Heckyes. I don't make a fuss, but I've never really vented about it either. Hopefully, next time it happens, I'll be a lot more cheerful about it and not have to work so hard to keep myself from correcting him. :)

I don't mind grammatical/spelling errors online, but it gets on my nerves when I see them in a newspaper, etc...the way I see it, if you're paid to write, you should brush up on your English skills!