Practice/practise
These two are constantly muddled up. That might seem an exaggerated claim, but even as we revised this book we came across this in The Times Higher Education Supplement: The institute has got to justify itself and we are now agreed we are not looking to issue a license to practice.’ The license being discussed is a license to teach; what the article should have said is ‘a license to practice’. Practice is a noun, whereas practice is a verb. Doctors, therefore, work at their practice where they practice their trade. In the same way, you practice your violin, but you do it during something that is your violin practice. If there is an active element of doing something, it is the verb, practise-, if, however, it is just a description of the activity, rather than actually doing the activity, it is practice. You should therefore:
Practise the piano, because practice makes perfect.
Another way of checking is to remember the two words device and devise, where there is the same distinction between noun and verb, but the sound is different enough to prevent them being confused. In Ameri... Read more...
