It's lose not loose

Sorry if this offends anyone, but people use the word "loose" incorrectly on the CC forum all the time. Here is the correct usage:

"I want to LOSE weight."

"I have LOOSE skin after losing all that weight."

Here is a more authoritative example if you are still skeptical.

Hopefully at least one person learns from this. It would make my day. 

What scaress me is the people who use loose for lose, your for you're (and vice versa!), too for to (or two for too...), there for their or they're, or not using any punctuation or any number of horrifying grammatical errors I've seen have passed English classes. 

Think about it...their teachers passed them in class. 

And most of them hold jobs where written communication is essential, yet they do not know how to spell words we all learned in elementary school.

And, even when they read the replies to their post where someone has used the correct spelling of the word (or the correct word, in most cases), they'll go ahead and reply with their incorrect version.  It is not a case of merely proofreading for typos.  Most of us make typos - and that's what they are: mistakes in typing.  Mistakes that are repeated again and again are not typos and are not merely posts in need of proofreading.  They are imbedded errors in the person. 

I also agree with the "txt msgs" issue - my texts are always long, but I spell out all words in my message and I even put in the apostrophes! 

Sorry for the rant, but it's really not that hard to pick up a "How to Write in English" book and learn a little bit.  I know I make grammatical errors now and again and I don't write in perfect English, but making the same mistakes repeatedly is inexcusable.

Hahahahaha, I've never seen 'taken for granite'! That's hysterical!

I grew up in the south. Its a wonder I can spell anything at all! You should HEAR these people sometimes! lol

oh and cite/sight/site... and effect/affect.

And in the workplace, my current company is full of engineers and its SUCH a relief! At my last job that kind of crap went out to CLIENTS that way!!! It made me embarassed to work there! I mean, really. Although, I guess 80% of the clients didn't even catch it. hehehe

I am dying over here!  The responses to this post are hilarious!  I feel exactly the same way.  Crazydiamondchrysalis: Funny examples!

Original Post by spoiled_candy:

The greatest debate on c-c almost 100 threads on topic alone.  

I would love to see stats on topic frequency.

We should design a CC Bingo game.  My suggestion for some squares:  loose vs. lose, master cleanse, special K diet, artificial sweeteners, I hate my scale

Just once, I would love to smack the idiot who says "pacific" instead of "specific".

There's a lot of misused language on this site. That's definitely the most prevalent though. In a vegetarian forum today: "since then, I've been an advent researcher into vegetarianism...". I had to re-read it to understand what she meant...

Proof read people :).

There are some people on this site for whom English is not their native language.  I can see this being an honest mistake for them, as English can be confusing.  On the other hand, I've met some Europeans who have better grammar and spelling than many Americans.

It's the ones from the US that drive me crazy.

When people want to "loose fat" or "loose weight" does this mean they want flabby arms and excess skin hanging off their bodies?

Oh, I also hate when people use an acronym without defining it.  If you use an acronym when posting for a general audience, it's useful to define it initially in the post.  For example, if I'm talking about Design For Six Sigma (DFSS), I've defined the acronym and used it in one line.  Now going forward, when I use DFSS, people know what it stands for.  Acronyms may make you sound smart or shorten the time to type a response, however if no one understands what you mean, your message gets lost.

Original Post by jehzimom:

Just once, I would love to smack the idiot who says "pacific" instead of "specific".

 You are killing me over here!  Im dying w/ pains from the laughter.

Original Post by jehzimom:

Just once, I would love to smack the idiot who says "pacific" instead of "specific".

Or "for all intensive purposes"

Original Post by ds1973:

For example, if I'm talking about Design For Six Sigma (DFSS), I've defined the acronym and used it in one line.  Now going forward, when I use DFSS, people know what it stands for. 

Sometimes the forum you're in can limit confusion.  For example, DFSS is an unlikely topic at CC, but if you're on a quality topics website, most will understand it.

BTW (by the way), given that I'm currently studying a chapter on DFSS, I found your reference to be interestingly well timed.

i agree.  correct spelling shows intelligence.  capitalization is just a waste of time and effort.

Original Post by santonacci:

Original Post by jehzimom:

Just once, I would love to smack the idiot who says "pacific" instead of "specific".

Or "for all intensive purposes"

 OOH Yeah. 

Original Post by jachid2:

i agree.  correct spelling shows intelligence.  capitalization is just a waste of time and effort.

"Irregardless"!

It's not even a WORD PEOPLE!!  I want to choke you. lmao

Original Post by spoiled_candy:

The greatest debate on c-c almost 100 threads on topic alone. 

 There's debate? Hands up the person who thinks they were correct in the use of the word "loose" for "lose" - I want to laugh at you.

I completely agree!  I, also, really don't get how people could misspell words when there is spell-check.

In response to ds1973:  I'm not picking on people who learned the horrifyingly confusing English language as a second language.  Non-native English writers have certain nuances in their writings that are easily distinguishable from the general, non-intelligent native-English writing public. 

I applaud those who learn English as a second language, and we should help out those who make those honest mistakes because, quite frankly, this language is very complicated.  But those who grow up speaking it and writing it have no excuse!

I just implore the general native-English writing public to learn just a few bits of grammar and spelling!  You know what, even Cosmo uses lose v. loose correctly!  I mean, sheesh, if Cosmo can do it, then certainly those folks can do it!

Original Post by hilary88:

Proof read people :).

The problem here is that if one doesn't know the difference between "loose" and "lose" to begin with, all the proof-reading in the world isn't going to help!

And it's hunger pangs, not hunger pains.

I've been seeing "hunger pains" on here so much that now "hunger pangs" almost looks weird to me.