Beware! Weight on the Loose

I think the confusion of loose and lose is among the most common errors made by casual writers of public words, whether on posters like this or in online discussions. It's not a typo, though -- it's a basic lack of realization that there are two different spellings of the two different words, pronounced "looss" and "looz."

I don't believe I've ever typed loose when I meant lose, but who knows.

A similar confusion that occurs all the time involves the dreaded word pair compose vs. comprise. I admit I only learned about this one in the past 10 years or so (from a wonderful proofreader I work with). I honestly don't recall hearing about it in school.

Very few writers get it right; usually the word they want is "compose," but all too often, "comprise" is used as a synonym. Examples:

• The group was composed of three girls and seven boys. (correct)
• The group was comprised of three girls and seven boys. (incorrect)
• The group comprises three girls and seven boys. (correct)

The way I learned it was that if I could exchange the phrase "made up" for the past tense version of the questionable word, then I should use compose. If not, then I should use comprise.

This reminds me that I've always wanted to be part of a discussion about what constitutes a typographical error or typo. I think it's most useful to reserve the term typo for situations where there is a completely accidental error, a slip of the typist's fingers (such as my tendency to type teh for the, or when a word is omitted). Therefore, errors like loose for lose or comprise for compose -- which are based on a misunderstanding of a word's meaning or perhaps of grammatical structure -- are not typos. (I sometimes refer to them as thinkos or grammos.)

And then there are the egregious errors you sometimes see in newspapers, books or other documents that should have been carefully proofread, which I can only think of as proofos.