Confusing the words loose and lose is a very common mistake. I don’t want to offend anyone, but this has become a pet peeve of mine. The idea of “loose weight” brings horrible images to my mind. I imagine fat getting all lumpy and muscles hanging loose. Not a pretty picture, is it?

The dictionary defines the verb to loose as “to make less tight; slacken or relax.” That’s the last thing you want to do when you want to reduce your weight. I think what we really want to do is to lose weight so we end up with loose clothes.

Often when people cut their calories but don’t work out, they lose muscle as well as fat. Their bodies end up looking very loose and even gaunt. The right kind of exercise can counteract that and make you look firmer and slimmer.

Tighten Up, Not Loosen Up

You should have the three following components in your plan to get to a healthier, fitter you:

• Cardiovascular exercise, such as jogging or aerobics, is important for burning fat and losing weight. Most people seem to know that.
• Strength training is also very important, but it seems to be more controversial, especially among women. Strength training builds lean muscle tissue, which is much more active than fat. Muscle burns extra calories even while you sleep. Women don’t have enough of the hormone called testosterone to get bulky (unless they take steroids), so you don’t need to worry about that. Instead, it will give you a tighter, more defined look, especially once you’ve gotten the extra fat off your body. Michelle Obama is a good example.
• Proper nutrition is the third leg of this stool. As I’ve stated in other articles, you need to eat a well-balanced, calorie-controlled diet, too.

In summary, you need all three of these components–cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and proper nutrition–in the proper amounts to lose fat, get stronger, and improve your health.

So, please watch what you wish for and watch your language. Don’t say you want to “loose weight” when you really want to “lose it.” In fact, you should actually say you want to “lose fat.” You don’t want your weight loss to include muscle loss. In fact, gaining muscle is a good thing. However, realize that you’re probably not going to gain a lot of muscle, so don’t use that as an excuse if the scale doesn’t budge.

What language do you use when talking about this? What do you think about strength training? Please let me know in a comment bleow.

Robyn

photo by ste3ve

Give me a red pencil, and you can consider me armed and dangerous. Grammar and spelling mistakes leap off the page at me. When I see something that’s grossly wrong, I often feel an overwhelming urge to fix it.

Do you follow the rules?

I know that grammar is often considered boring and stifling to your creativity. However, I disagree. I believe readers can become so distracted by poor grammar and spelling that they completely miss your point. Worse yet, they may totally misunderstand you and get it completely wrong.

I love the rules and the rhythm of grammar. Much like the wooden beams that support a house, grammar and spelling support the messages you are sending. They provide a foundation for your writing, which you can then decorate and embellish as you see fit. Here are quotes from two famous authors about grammar and punctuation.

“What I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object being photographed.”
- Joan Didion

“My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.”
- Ernest Hemingway

Here’s an actual question I saw written on an English language discussion forum:

Why it is important to learn English through the grammar. Is it not enough when the communication understanable beetwen two people or more?

How many mistakes do you see in that?

I can get the gist of this, but it could be interpreted several different ways. Is this communication truly and easily understandable (or understanable, in this case)? For example, is the first sentence asking a question, or is it making some kind of statement?

When is a rule not a rule?

With all of that said, do you always have to follow all of the grammar rules you were taught in school? No, you don’t. Sometimes the rules, even the ones your teachers may have beaten into you, aren’t really rules at all. They’re really style choices. In some cases, they’re not even valid rules.

“Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.”
- Jack Lynch

Last week, I attended a book signing by Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl. She has a hugely popular and entertaining podcast called Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. I highly recommend it. She wrote a book of the same name that was a New York Times bestseller. She has just published her second book, The Grammar Devotional, which gives 365 daily tips for successful writing.

Grammar Girl’s website says this, “Mignon believes that learning is fun, and the vast rules of grammar are wonderful fodder for lifelong study. She strives to be a friendly guide in the writing world. Her arch enemy is the evil Grammar Maven who inspires terror in the untrained and is neither friendly nor helpful.”

Two of my favorite Grammar Girl tips shoot down some tried-and-true rules. Are these true or false?

Never split an infinitive. FALSE. You can feel free to happily ignore this “rule.” However, you may still want to follow it on a resume, just in case your interviewer doesn’t know this. On page 134 of The Grammar Devotional, Mignon says, “Blame Latin for the logic behind the nineteenth-century rule about not splitting infinitives. In Latin there are no two-word infinitives, so it’s impossible to split ones, and English teachers decided that if it couldn’t be done in Latin, it shouldn’t be done in English.” She goes on to say that notions change over time, and today almost everyone agrees that it’s OK to split an infinitive, especially if it makes the meaning clearer.

Never end a sentence with a preposition. FALSE. On page 180, Mignon says, “One of the biggest myths of all time is that it’s blasphemy to end a sentence with a preposition. It’s certainly wrong to end a sentence with a preposition when you could leave the darn thing off and doing so wouldn’t change the meaning. So, of course, it’s wrong to ask, ‘Where is she at?’ It means the sane thing as ‘Where is she?’ Leave off the at. But nobody expects you to ask, ‘From where are you?’ or ‘On what did you step?’ No need for stuffy-sounding contortions.”

Once you know the rules of grammar, you can determine when and how to break them. It’s a bit like playing a game. There are great writers who break them all the time in order to get a specific effect. The difference is, they do it with intention and style.

I love grammar, and I love to play with it. I may be a grammar geek, but I’m not a grammar slave.

Spelling, on the other hand… Don’t mess with me on that.

What do you think? Are you a grammar geek or a complete grammar rebel?

Robyn

photo by notorious d.a.v. on flickr