Loose or lose?

Okay, half of you are probably thinking 'What? This is so obvious. How can people get this wrong?' Well, it is not obvious to the other half because people do get this wrong. Frequently.

Loose

Let's start with the adjective loose. This means (among other meanings) something that is not firmly or tightly fixed in place, something that is not tied up or shut in, something that is not fastened or packaged together (thanks Oxford English Dicitonary). Did you get all those 'somethings'? They are the things that loose is describing. This word has a soft 's' sound at the end of it.

I have a loose tooth!   (A tooth that is not firmly fixed in place.)

Lose

Lose, on the other hand, is a verb and it has a number of meanings but the useful ones here are to become unable to find or to no longer have or keep. This word has a 'z' sound at the end of it.

I don't want to lose my tooth or I won't get money from the tooth fairy.
(I don't want to become unable to find my tooth...)

And to finish with - a sentence with them both at the same time.

 I'm going to lose my temper because the neighbour's loose dogs are on my property again.

No need to lose it. We've got it all sorted. No loose ends!

What do I capitalise in a heading?

Increasingly there is a tendency towards less clutter in our writing - and that includes punctuation and formatting. Headings or titles are affected by this and it is becoming more common to see headings capitalised using sentence case (that is, only the first letter in the sentence and proper nouns have a capital). Life is much easier for us when we use sentence case because then we don't have to ask that tricky question: what words need a capital letter in my heading? Nevertheless some titles still require capitalisation and there is no getting out of it (book titles and report headings, for example). There is no definitive answer that I can give you to the capitalisation question, but I can give you some guidelines.

Do use a capital letter for:

• the first and last words of the title or heading
• all nouns and pronouns (e.g. he, she, you, it, Frankfurt, pony, forecast)
• all verbs (e.g. goes, falls, have, is)
• all adjectives (e.g. pretty, grand, fantastic, miniature)
• all adverbs (e.g. quickly, smoothly, finally)
• the word that in whatever role it has in the sentence
• longer conjunctions (e.g. since, because, although)
• longer prepositions (e.g. around, between, through)
• the first word following a colon and, if you wish, the first letter following a hyphen or dash.

Don't use a capital letter for:

• definite or indefinite articles (i.e. a, an, the)
• shorter conjunctions (e.g. nor, or, for, and, but)
• the words as and to wherever you might find them in the sentence
• shorter prepositions (e.g. in, out, over, on)

This is a nice set of guidelines and I acknowledge K. D. Sullivan and Merilee Eggleston for this succinct list. However there are a couple of riders that all reference books on the subject add.

1. Capitalisation of headings can be tricky if you don't know what part of the sentence the word is. Take a look in a dictionary if you don't know. If in doubt, follow your gut instinct - type the heading with and without the capital and see which way looks best to you.
2. Think of the significance of the word in the heading or title. Generally speaking the word should be capitalised if it is important to the understanding of the title.

As with so much of the English language capitalisation can be a matter of preference, but with the guidelines above you will be able to capitalise most titles and headings with confidence.

Prepositions

I can't believe you are actually reading a post about prepositions! But since you are here, read on.

Prepositions are all those common words that work with a noun or pronoun to show the noun's relation to the rest of the sentence.

Words such as

around about before after up down in out on to with without near by through for against

are prepositions.

Where does the preposition go?

If you ask anyone what they know about prepositions most will parrot that you must never end a sentence with a preposition. This is true if you are writing Latin, but it is not a hard and fast rule in English. Generally speaking the preposition goes before the noun/pronoun it is attached to

Francis is going to university. 

But this doesn't always have to be. Both versions of the question below are acceptable.

To which university is Francis going?

Which university is Francis going to?

 The first version sounds very formal to us but you will still see it in some writing. The second version reflects how we speak.  Some people would rather avoid writing the second version but feel that the first version is too formal. You can solve the problem (sometimes) by changing the verb. In this case we can change 'go' to 'attend'

Which university will Francis attend?

Repeating prepositions

Usually there is no need to repeat prepositions in a list within a sentence

I am allergic to dairy products and (to) nuts.

But sometimes you need to so you can avoid a confusing sentence

We are talking about the movie and about eating chocolates.

Just talking about eating chocolates, not actually consuming them.

Prepositions in a title or a headline

What if you have a capitalised heading? Do you use a capital letter at the start of a preposition? This is a fuzzy area and it can vary. A good rule of thumb is to capitalise a preposition if it is five letters or longer

Between the Covers

Gone with the Wind

How do I know if it's a preposition?

Look it up in the dictionary! Weird, huh? If you're stuck without a dictionary you could try a little trick. Take 'with' out of  'Gone with the Wind' and put your suspected preposition in. If it sounds like it could conceivably fit in you probably have a preposition on your hands ('Gone Through the Wind', 'Gone to the Wind', 'Gone down the Wind' etc.).

Which preposition?

There are some standard preposition/verb combinations and we English speakers are terrible at using the correct ones. The use of some prepositions is changing to match our spoken English. My pet hate is 'bored of' instead of 'bored with' or 'bored by'. A quick look at Oxford Dictionaries online showed me that this usage is quite common now and while you are best to avoid it in writing feel free to use it in speech. Nobody tell my kids!

If you aren't quite sure which preposition belongs in your sentence you can just go online and search up 'verb preposition list' and there are any number of websites with references you can use.