One of the most commonly made mistakes in English language is with the word ‘choice’.

Choice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one or more of them.

It is a noun.

For example, “she made the right choice!” Here ‘made’ is the verb which is indispensable while making use of the noun ‘choice’.

The present participle of choice is ‘choose’. It is a verb, an action word, which is pronounced as “chews”. To choose is to pick out or select (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives.

For example, “You need to choose a color of paint for the walls.”

The past tense of choose is ‘chose’.  It is a verb too and is pronounced as “choze”.

For example, “John chose the red wine over the white one.”

The past participle of chose is ‘chosen’. It is, simply put, a mere addition of ‘en’ to chose, pronounced as ‘chozen’ (choh-zuhn)

For example, “being a doctor was my chosen profession”.

The two words, chose and choose, are often wrongly used in place of each other  and is blamed to be confusing because they don’t follow the typical rule of using “-ed” for past tense.

So here’s the rule… in order to make sure that we get it right while conversing in English.

• Use ‘chose’ (rhymes with “so”) for past tense
• Use ‘choose’ (rhymes with “blue”) for the current tense

So, Chose is the past tense of choose.

That’s all there is to it! Here is another example:

“You choose the shirt that you want to wear to office. In fact, you chose to wear a white shirt yesterday.”

So the next time you use the word, you know:

• a single ‘o’ for past tense and
• a double ‘o’ for present tense!

That is it!

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