Don’t choose to loose

On what seems like a daily basis, I read e-mail from other IT consultants who are talking about loosing data, loosing clients, loosing money, loosing their minds, and so on. (They use the double-”o” in both the verb and gerund form.) What is with that? I could understand if the sound of the word “lose” lent itself to that misspelling. But I don’t see anyone writing looze (as in snooze), luise (as in cruise), luse (as in ruse), loes (as in shoes), lues (as in dues), lewes (as in ewes), luze (as in Druze), or lwos (as in twos). Of course, most of those errors would be caught by a spell-checker. As far as I can tell, the only word that could possibly lead someone to “loose” by example is choose. So here’s a helpful mnemonic: Don’t choose to loose. Say it right, and you’ll see how silly it is to say loose when you mean lose. Say it wrong, and you’ll be reminded not to make that mistake again.