Comment by ColinWright | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ColinWright | Hacker News Reader

Please can someone edit this title to correct the "looses" to "loses"?

No, I'm not being a grammar nazi, I'm just trying to reduce friction for readers. Those who don't know the difference won't notice, but those who do notice the difference will care, and will have a small "jar" of annoyance, sigh about illiteracy, and be distracted from the main point.

This isn't spam, where bad grammar is deliberate and acts as a filter to help focus on those more likely to be duped into clicking. This is submission to HN, where the purpose is to share knowledge with similarly-minded people.

Do you get your web sites proof-read? Do you use correct grammar and spelling on the pages intended to attract customers and sell product? Do you do everything you can to improve the experience of your visitors, to make their visit pleasant, annoyance-free, and funnel them into conversions?

Why should you treat your colleagues here on HN differently? Show them some respect, and pay attention to friction-free communication.

I do recognize that not everyone here is a native English speaker. For them I hold huge respect. Many times I've tried to communicate in a language not my own, and I have some insight into the size of the task. This is aimed firstly at people who don't seem to respect their audience enough to even try, and secondly to point out that small things like this might very easily have an effect on sales.

(Added in edit - probably according to someone-or-other's law there will be a grammatical or spelling error in this comment. If you had to hunt for it then you don't win, you're just missing the point. If you stumbled over it and it spoiled your flow, please let me know so I can fix it. Thanks.)

(Added in further edit - This comments has already had at least two up-votes and at least two down-votes. I don't care about the karma, but I do care about effective communication. Here's my opinion - instances of using "loose" instead of "lose" (to pick one common example) damage effective communication for some of your intended audience. If you don't care about that, fine. It is, however, information for you. If you want to shoot the messenger then feel free to down-vote.)

>according to someone-or-other's law there will be a grammatical or spelling error in this comment

If you or others are curious, it is Muphry's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphrys_law)

Good god that is awesome.

Thank you. It's becoming quite common to mistake 'loose' with 'lose' and they have entirely different meanings. It's one of my pet peeves and something I try to help out non-native english speakers with as well.

Not sure bout you but I see this as an _extremely_ common misspelling on the web. I would love to know how it arises. Phonetics? Soundalike? Lose and loose certainly have very different meanings.

I'd guess that people assume it's "oo" from the way it sounds.

"lose" doesn't sound like "pose"...

Ah english... bruise, muse, prove, proof

Maybe there's a similar word in another language. There's lot of mistakes of this kind. For example, french often say "actually" when they mean "currently", because its translation is "actuellement".

We could probably get the answer by hanging out on an ESL forum for a bit, that's assuming it's non-native English speakers who are making this mistake (it might not be!).

I suspect it's almost entirely native English speakers making this mistake. Those who learn their English as an acquired language are taught about this sort of thing, and it's known intellectually.

Native English speakers just rattle stuff out, and don't know any explicit rules (and their exceptions) to go back, re-read, and check.

As a handy guide for those who struggle with this:

  Lose rhymes with choose.
  Loose rhymes with abuse.

No doubt that will completely clear up the confusion! :)

Not to be obtuse, but shouldn't loose should rhyme with choose, and lose with chose.

As a non-English speaking person, i get more than annoyed when I see such common spelling mistakes. It's hard enough to read correctly spelled English, don't make it harder please.

Agreed! The thing I found most confusing in the title though is "At the same time, Bing gained 4.2% market share."

Over what period of time? I am guessing that it is over the past year but the first part specifies a rate and not a specific time interval.

The article doesn't mention a rate at all or show data prior to 2011, so the headline should really be comparing differences between 2012 and 2011 and not mention 'rate'.

I found Compete data for 2009-2010 (http://media.marketwire.com/attachments/201009/MOD-13263_ima...) and have copied it below.

Aug 2009 72.6%

Aug 2010 70.1% (-2.5%)

Aug 2011 68.3% (-1.8%)

Aug 2012 65.7% (-2.6%)

So, the percentage indicated in the headline isn't horribly inaccurate (Google's share also dropped by 2.5% between 2009 and 2010 and averages a 2.3% drop in market share per year over the past three years.)

I agree that the first number shouldn't be a rate. x per y implies a rate though like 26 kilometres per hour or 16 miles per gallon.

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