Today I would like to draw your attention to a mistake. A mistake that has become, in my opinion, far, far too common. A mistake that I fear in years to come could lead to Britain being the laughing stock of the civilised world.
I speak, of course, about our nation’s inability to spell the word ‘lose’ correctly.
Now I know that last year we experienced a summer of winning unlike any we had experienced before, and that again this summer we seem to have been more often on the winning side than the losing one. But even so, even before we started winning lots of gold medals back in the dark days of relying on Sir Steve Redgrave to save face for the country and come away with something, even then, not once were we on the “loosing” side. Indeed for that to be the case it would have to be a competition where our side’s role was to open a jam jar or something, and even then the more commonly accepted term would be “loosening”.
Now I’d like to make it clear that I’m not addressing this post towards anyone who suffers from the disability and curse that is Dyslexia. Indeed my mum has for many years been a dyslexia support teacher and I fully understand that such grammatical errors are not your fault. You are fully exempt from this post. Indeed I don’t claim to have perfect spelling and grammar myself and I’m confident that this post shall be littered with minor errors (even the title includes a word that isn’t a word for shamefully bad pun based reasons!). I don’t generally make a point of correcting grammatical mistakes for this very reason, but the whole “loosing” thing has gone too far, and the next time I see the word used incorrectly I’m afraid that even my generally calm and easy-going temperament may be shattered beyond repair. If that happens, I fear I may well lose my self control and let loose on the writer in question.
Not once have I seen it spelt correctly in the last six months and, as a nation with a proud heritage of losing at major sporting events I think it prudent that we prepare ourselves for the worst and ensure that we don’t bow down to this most irritating of spelling mistakes and forget entirely how to spell the word correctly. Otherwise we shall forever be known as the nation that are such bad losers we can’t even spell losers.
So, just to clarify, if you’ve just lost the game you didn’t loose it, you did in fact lose it.
I thank you.
p.s. whilst we’re at it the phrase “I won you” hasn’t been true since the days you could win yourself a slave at a game of bingo. Unless you’re possibly talking to the goldfish you just won at the fair, in which case you’re probably insane and correct use of grammar is the least of your problems. In summary: STOP IT!
