curioser and curioser
Do you see the spelling mistake in the following sentence (taken verbatim from the Tuesday, August 5, Mercury News)?
It's kind of the opposite of the one in this sentence
This second mistake I've seen more and more frequently, but the first one? A first for me. This loose/lose confusion, frankly, confuses me. I can't think of any words ending in -oose that are pronounced with the /z/ sound of lose -- goose, moose, papoose, loose -- /s/ all the way. And I can't think of any -ose words that sound like them, either. Most have an /s/ sound instead of a /z/ one -- hose, suppose, impose, rose -- now that I think of it, lose is kind of an oddball word in terms of the vowel sound, but still. If you want to go for phonetic spelling, go all the way and write looze. Or even looz.
You know what, though? I've never seen anyone write looser when they really meant loser. As in, only a pathetic loser would spend this much time on a teeny tiny little spelling mistake.
Jones said she was concerned about the 10 dogs still running lose on Brunette's property, and worried that he would continue to harm them if allowed to return home.
It's kind of the opposite of the one in this sentence
My daughter is very absent minded and I'm afraid she's going to loose her lunch money.
This second mistake I've seen more and more frequently, but the first one? A first for me. This loose/lose confusion, frankly, confuses me. I can't think of any words ending in -oose that are pronounced with the /z/ sound of lose -- goose, moose, papoose, loose -- /s/ all the way. And I can't think of any -ose words that sound like them, either. Most have an /s/ sound instead of a /z/ one -- hose, suppose, impose, rose -- now that I think of it, lose is kind of an oddball word in terms of the vowel sound, but still. If you want to go for phonetic spelling, go all the way and write looze. Or even looz.
You know what, though? I've never seen anyone write looser when they really meant loser. As in, only a pathetic loser would spend this much time on a teeny tiny little spelling mistake.
posted by Sarah at 8:00 AM
3 Comments:
There are spelling mistakes and there are typos. In that case, I don't see how you tell which is which. But I had to read it twice to see the mistake. Kind of like those sentences where they remove a bunch of letters but you can still read what the sentence just as quickly as if the letters were still there. If I can understand what someone is trying to communicate to me that's good enough.
Actually, those sentences with the letters missing make me feel physically ill. I can read them, but it hurts.
I read them both 3 times and still didn't find the spelling error. But then again it's no secret that I'm a poor speller.
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