One of the more interesting aspects of reading blogs is reading the comments that each post gets.  You may think I’m talking about the "community" aspect of blogs engendered by the "conversation" between the blogger and the commenters.  Nah.  I’m talking about some of the amazingly BAD communication that goes on, what with poorly thought out arguments and horrible spelling.

Now I don’t want to be one to throw stones, because Lord knows I’m prone to horrible grammar and my own share of misspelled words, but there are two words that I find to be the most commonly misapplied.  They are "loose" and "lose".  If one were to depend on bloggers and their commenters for the proper usage of these words we’d soon find ourselves loosing games and tightening lose shoestrings.

Why these two words?  I mean "loose" has a very long OOH sound and "lose" has a much shorter, sharper U sound.  You’d think that the two Os in loose would prompt the speller to think "loose" and not "lose", but that isn’t the case.  Perhaps it’s the same mental malady that causes people to associate "republican" with "fiscal conservative", or "pat buchanan" with "moral", or "hummer" with "SUV".  Who knows, but it’s as irritating as the sound of some looser rattling the lose change in his pocket.