why?. . . why??? . . . why?????
WHY do so many people spell the word losing as loosing ???
Hell, it’s not even a word, let alone a verb – the verb is loosen.
I honestly don’t get it. If it only happened now and again I could write it off as simple bad spelling habits, but it happens all the time and all over the place!!! 
casa azahar 
Ah, someone else who hates that particular mis-spelling as much as I do.
I’ve heard numerous excuses for it, every one of which could easily be resolved by the use of a spell checker.
Can we rant about other pet mis-spellings and lazy punctuation, too?
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Shure! 😉
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The strange thing about it is that it’s so common. Even people whose spelling is normally pretty good seem to get this one wrong.
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Woo hoo! I can rant!
What about “your”/”you’re”? GAAAA!
And apostrophe misuse? (I knew someone who claimed to be a writer who never apostrophized her possessives!) GAAA!
“Loosing” has become so common, I’ve seen a lot of people spelling “lose” as “loose”. Which really makes me lose my grip…
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I work at a university, and I can’t believe the students that mix up “to, two and too” and “there, they’re and their”.
–L
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“should of” , “could of”, etc …
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Well, I could have a fit about this sort of thing, but I won’t. It completely bugs me to see “loosing” used, as well as all the other things mentioned above.
In defense of all those poor mis-spellers, I think that one of the things that has happened is that the misusage has become so common that people don’t see it as incorrect. After all, they have seen “loosing” on 150 other blogs, so it doesn’t “look” wrong any more.
Also, they just don’t care. A culture that regularly sees IMHO, LOL, BTW, FTR and can interpret those correctly is not likely to care about spelling. Y does it bothr u so mch anywy???
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Guilty! I constantly spell it wrong! Sorry!
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I’m not an instant messenger….
What does:
IMHO
FTR
mean?
–L
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Oh, yes, “should of” and “could of”… I was just railing about that the other day. Grrr!
I can’t believe some of the incomprehensible emails I get at work.
I think IMHO stands for “In My Humble Opinion” (and the opinion following the anagram usually isn’t too humble, IMHO 😉 ) and FTR stands for “For The Record”.
Correct me if I’m wrong? I’m not much of an instant messenger either, and when I do, I spell things out longhand anyway.
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So called textspeak or txtspk
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
For me as a non native english speaker it’s rather tricky to interpret these abbreviations. My kids, who are non native English speakers, as well as Mr DQ, who is, uses them too frequently in textmessages. It’s not that unsusal that I have to text back and ask what they meant.
Spelling mistakes in general has never been a problem for me. Unfortunately since I started to be a regular at the Neurology dept they occur, and I don´t always spot them. Mostly it’s letters in wrong order or simply forgotten, but apostrophes can also mix up things for me.
The spell checking computer programmes are not always helpful.
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Yep – that mis-spelling makes me loose it!
And IMHO has a derivative, “IMNSHO”. In My Not So Humble Opinion.
My computer spelling is a lot better than my hand written spelling, partly because I can see (and understand) what I have typed. What does mess me up are the typos. And I just: love; colons and; semicolons’. (That is a possessive apostrophical because it was my semicolon!)
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Gaaaaa-ing along with dragonqueen about textspeak.
The other day one of my students sent me a txtspk message on my mobile phone – in Spanish! I had no idea what she was saying – I barely understand that crap in English, let alone in Spanish – and as a result she missed one of her classes.
I didn’t know what FTR meant before now. Those abbreviations don’t bug me so much but for some reason LOL drives me totally mental!!!
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“I think that one of the things that has happened is that the misusage has become so common that people don’t see it as incorrect.”
As an interesting variant, a few years ago I read Pinker’s Words and Rules in which he suggests that the regularisation of language takes place where people don’t see the correct usage. Most irregular verbs are common. Many uncommon irregular verbs have become regular over time.
Language evolves. Perhaps in hundred years time “loosing” will have become correct. Fortunately I will be long gone by then.
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There used to be a programme at SR, or non commercial national broadcsting service,about Swedish. Grammar, spelling and the evolvment of the language was discussed weekly by a scholar and a journalist. People could mail in questions and there were interviews with as well native as non native speakers.
I used to listen to the programme while working since it was broadcasted at daytime. It was both amuzing and educational – so of course it was discontinued. All in the efforts of making SR a commercial radio look alike.
But that’s another rant.
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We should spell ‘lose’ as looz and ‘loose’ as loos. It is not a spelling mistake, it’s a usage error! You don’t have to wait a hunderd years it’s in my dictionary now!
Loosing = loosening.
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My pet hate is ‘assume’ when it’s pronounced ‘ashume’.
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And how many people get ‘their’ and ‘there’ wrong?
Why isn’t ‘many’ spelt ‘menee’ or ‘meny’?
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Their, there and they’re … not that I do this of course!
Loosing is rather archaic, isn’t it? And it doesn’t have the same meaning as loosening.
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I lived in Switzerland for a year, ages ago, and was frankly amazed to see a regular prime-time Saturday night TV show in France about grammar, punctuation and spelling. Yes, I know. Staggering, non?
They seem to have had one contestant each from all the french-speaking nations (France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, as well as various islands like Mauritius and several African countries) and the object of the ‘game’ appeared to be to prove that only the *real* french could speak the language properly.
It was brilliant. Although I think if we had a version for english-speaking nations it would probably start Armageddon prematurely.
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The phrase “a lot” is two words.
First word: “a”
Second word: “lot”
NOT “alot”!
ugh… I digress.
(bs.)
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What about “irregardless”? No such word. It’s just “regardless.”
This is fun…
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Hi (bs.) and welcome. 🙂
Oooh yes – ‘irregardless’ *shudder*.
I’m all for language evolving but some words do grate, like ‘normalcy’.
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Disinterested when its used to mean the same as uninterested.
And refute when its used to mean deny.
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One thing I do appreciate is that I haven’t been accused of making fun of dyslexics or pretending to be somehow ‘intellectually superior’ 🙄 … which is what happened to me when I started this same post on The Other Place.
Quite refreshing. 🙂
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Uh huh. I was always surprised at the overwhelming number of dyslexics at The Other Place. As for the intellectual superiority… methinks sometimes people doth protest too much. If the shoe fits…
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I think people who use “loosing” aren’t referring to loosening, but losing something, so it’s more a spelling error.
Some of *my* favorites — NOT: chose and choose, adjectives used as nouns (overweight is the one an editor friend of mine mentioned!). As for txtspk, *which* meaning of LOL are you referring to? Is it “laugh out loud” or “lots of laughs”?
Santa did not get me a copy of “Grammar for Dummies”, after all, so I’ll have to get it for myself.
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To me LOL is pronounced as written, rendering it completely meanlingless and totally annoying.
Just found this over on Archie’s blog (via baby jebus) – thought you might like it.
Type Like An Egyptian
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As far as I’m concerned, LOL means either Little Old Lady or Left-Over Lunch.
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lazy-or-late?
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