Start your sentences with a capital letter.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case

right. because starting with lowercase changes the meaning of what i wrote unlike loose <-> lose, which are totally, like, the same thing.

It didn't change the meaning, because everyone understood what he said. The human mind is amazing at that. If you're going to be pedantic, fine, but own up to it.

Loose means something totally different than lose. Personally, I read each as their (real) meanings and when they don't make sense I have to go back and reread the sentence.

Yes, I can figure it out, but it's no fun to have to work to read comments. May as well let commenters use 113t-speak if we don't care how hard the comment is to read.

Were you actually confused and thought he meant "loose"?

If you're going to correct someone, you should make sure you are also correct. In addition, not using a capital letter makes it look a bit like txt speak and generally brings down the level of discource.

Discourse. Let us all just stop now.

A spelling mistake, sorry. I wasn't correcting someone, just pointing out why his posts were getting down voted.

Getting meta, are we?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta

I haven't been on HN for as long as most folks here. What is the policy on grammar correction? I know personally I want to be corrected if I make an error, but I don't think everybody feels that way...

Just curious so as to not rock the boat.

For single posts, I'd say resist the impulse; it adds noise to the discussion and rarely helps anything. If the error is repeated, then it may be more helpful to correct.

Mainly I think we try to just lead by example.

The OP used "loose" twice in his comment. My post was to point out his mistake without being snarky. Obviously, some people think otherwise.. sigh..

Some spelling/grammar corrections are irrelevant, abusive, and inflammatory while others are instructive, helpful, and interesting. This community (to me) is more about the "hey, did you know that it's 'capital' except for when you're talking about the building, then it's 'capitol'" than the "STFU stupid, u can't even spell right"