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English in IIS thread

Peter noticed today that IIS has an error in the English for one of its dialog boxes. We immediately searched for it and found this bizarre thread.

It’s hard to read it in its original form, so I have re-organized it here and saved it for posterity.

Has anyone noticed this spelling error?

Anonymous:

Hi, I've found a surprising spelling error in IIS, in the Stop/Start/Reset dialog box.

It says “You will loose all current sessions…” rather than “lose”.

Microsoft, shame on you… ;-)

jeethu:

Hi For enormous products range and user friendliness Microsoft provides , Lets forget this simple stuff :-) out of hunderd thousand lines of coding.

Jeethu Joseph IIS/Asp.Net Engineer Microsoft

Is this a real Engineer at Microsoft? I was curious, so I tracked his accounts around the internets and it seems this is his home page. His resume says he’s certified, partnered, etc. but that he never actually worked for Microsoft.

andrewh:

Is this the official response!? ^_^

I’m just a little surprised that Microsoft’s stringent QA process didn’t catch this little typo. I was even more surprised when I googled and nobody seems to have mentioned it.

Just another one to file under “MS-related strangeness…”

egbert:

OK, let's improve the world, and forbid spell errors, and let's also forbid, unofficial English like: "I aint' do it" (instead of I won't do it) and "you and me" (instead of you and I).

“I ain’t do?” I have never heard of this one. Anyone? Sounds like a job for English from Friends.

andrewh:

Sorry, but what on Earth are you talking about?

Slang has got precisely nothing to do with poor spelling, or mistakes in QA.

I’m not coming here to attack MS, but to point out what I think is an interesting anomaly.

Your reluctance to laugh about it with me could be seen to reflect a slightly precious attitude towards criticism, when in fact there is none offered.

The fact that this isn’t an open-source project, and people are paid to fix this kind of thing, is noteworthy. But hey, it’s no big deal.

Ciao.

Hey! That’s mine. You can’t use “Ciao” to end a post! Oh, wait, he didn’t use the exclamation point. That’s okay then.

pedro:

hi

Maybe I missed the point, but you are saying that it should be written “lose” instead of “loose”, right ?

If So, and just as a side note, here in Portugal, “loose” is taught as the correct english spelling.

maybe, who scanned for errors wasn’t american ?

Pedro Leite From Portugal.

The difference between loose and lose is actually pretty hard to figure out. Mainly because they sound a like and people tend to pronounce them similarly when they speak. I know I have a hard time telling which was being used if either would work in a spoken sentence.

andrewh:

> maybe, who scanned for errors wasn't american ?

Very good point! I was not aware of that.

Have a nice day,

Andrew

gerry:

I love this opening sentence. It’s just perfect. It makes sense if said out-loud, but totally doesn’t work when written.

well , "loose" is the correct english spelling for "loose" and "lose" is the correct english spelling for "lose" but the 2 have very different meanings.

pedro:

Hi

who would know that today i would be learning english !!!

thank you for the clarification on a subtle linguistic difference.

before posting, i asked an english teacher and she ( yes, I actually talk to women in the flesh ) only mentioned the “loose” as being part of the to lose, lost, lost verb.

thanks a bunch

Best Regards

Pedro Leite from Portugal

Huh?! That comment about talking to women came out of left-field. Wow.

egbert:

ok, I understand you. I might just not have been in the mood for a laugh :)

Wow. That was fun, strange and surreal. I hope you enjoyed it. :-)

Ciao!

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