Of all the common misspellings, none boggles my mind so much as the usage of “loose” instead of “lose.” It happens all the time, and I can’t figure out what rule people who make this mistake are confusing. Loose sounds just like it’s spelled, a la goose, moose, and papoose. I can understand confusing “lead and led” because the past tense of read is read. Also, lead is pronounced leed, even though there is an element called lead that’s pronounced led. So that’s an appropriate confusion, to me. Loose and lose, I don’t get, but it is a nice indicator to me that if you make this mistake, I probably would not want to be your friend.