It's LOSE, not LOOSE!!!

[Ophiuchus]

An extra $.02 from a fellow herper who abhores poor grammar...

I generally agree with the OP, although I'll gladly admit that I'm irked by many more grammatical mishaps than just the "loose/lose" thing.

First of all, the line between a simple typo and an actual misunderstanding on how something is spelled is pretty blurred. I mean, I'm sure we've all spelled "breaded" dragon before or just forgot to put an apostrophe when needed, right? Lord knows, I've done it.

But some of this stuff is elementary. We learned the differences between "lose" and "loose" in grade school, just as we learned the differences of: there, they're, their, your, you're, been (not "benn!"), etc, etc, etc. Yeah yeah, most of us still understand what is being said, but what it says about the poster is one of the following things:

- never actually learned the difference in the first place, in which I blame whatever piss-poor education they recieved as a child
- they learned it once, but because 90% of our society is stupid and never picks up a book once in a while, they forgot...so when they do have to try and communicate by the written word, they're grossly out of practice
- they simply are too lazy to care

Someone once made the argument that some people are handicapped and proper grammar isn't a strong suit of theirs. In some cases, maybe...but IMHO, if you can get online, use the internet to find a forum, read the directions and create your account and start posting, using the basic grammar you learned in grade school shouldn't be that big of a hassle.