English must be the simplest language in the world - its words do not usually ‘bend’ much, it’s word order is always the same, it has very short words and ‘articles’ and prepositions and such to clarify the meaning - it couldn’t be simpler. Try japanese or some nordic languages or german for a difficult language.
‘Lose’ and ‘Loose’ shouldn’t be so difficult, they are completely different words. There is no excuse in 2019, the internet exists, and this thing (among others) can be checked in seconds, literally.
But these word crimes, or ‘american typos’ as some people have called them, seem to persist. Not because it’s not your first language - heck, the native speakers are the worst word criminals, because they learn the SPOKEN english first, and then have difficulty (or egotistical laziness) trying to figure out how to turn those mouth utterances into legible language.
I find the students and learners of english, that do not speak english natively, are actually more knowledgeable and diligent about how simple english words are supposed to be written.
If you wrote ‘bok’ instead of ‘book’, no one would let it go - people would correct you, and you would be better for it. But somehow, when it comes to these typical mental laziness / stupidity errors, people actually DEFEND the ignorant/stupid ones.
Communication is difficult enough as it is, we don’t have to make it more difficult by allowing people to write english any which way.
It’s very helpful to correct someone, it’s not insult, it’s not punishment, it’s just a very good, informative, helpful thing to do. I LOVE being corrected, if I am wrong in some language. These ‘little words’, that I call ‘articles’ or ‘prepositions’ (and I might be wrong in that!) are, for example, a big problem for me. I often get them wrong.
But english not being ‘native language’ is no excuse - I had to learn english, although it’s basically my third language, and I am learning a fourth one, and I am not about to be insultingly egotistical by learning it wrong and refusing to correct my mistakes.
One reason why people get ‘lose’ and ‘loose’ wrong, is because no one corrects them, and so many people spread this mistake, that anyone learning it will sub-consciously remember seeing the word ‘loose’ used in this way, so they use it. And bam! Someone corrects them - what the heck?
Yes, you should’ve done your homework, you should’ve been diligent. English is simple, so there is no excuse. But it’s not simple enough that you can just wing it any which way and always hit the target - you have to know the words and how they’re written, if you want to be able to communicate a) clearly and b) without making a fool of yourself.
Call me a grammar-Nátionalsocialist all you want, but I am making the world a better place by clarifying the otherwise unreasonably muddified communication that goes on in this world. In a good world, people that correct others wouldn’t be needed, because no one would WANT to be stupid enough to commit a word crime in the simplest language of the planet…
I recommend everyone watch Weird Al’s “Word Crimes” (which also has some of these mistakes in the video - I guess the graphics artist isn’t very good at english, although otherwise, the video is pretty amazing in my opinion).
P.S. Honest typos are normal, expected and especially in LONG texts, pretty much inevitable. I probably have many typos in this post. Those are OK, and need not be corrected - the typer (it’s really not a ‘typist’ - it’s not an ‘ism’) KNOWS how to spell and type it, but fingers sometimes slip and you don’t notice it, etc. We are all human (I hope), and thus we all make mistakes - honest mistakes are perfectly fine, and acceptable. But these mentally lazy, stupidity or willful ignorance-based attitude word crimes I can’t and won’t stand.