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...

The most important thing to remember is that there is no such form as it’s’. Its is one of a few words that are already possessives, and do not, therefore, need an apostrophe adding to them. These words are

my/mine its

your/yours our/ours his their/theirs

her/hers whose

As we noted in the last passage, it’s is two words (‘it is’ or ‘it has’) contracted into one: it has nothing to do with the possessive. It’s is used in a large number of situations, but it is by far the best policy to avoid contractions (words such as can’t, don’t and won’t) in formal essays, as these are colloquial forms of the words and therefore not entirely appropriate. Some writers, it has to be said, disagree. There is, though, a further danger with contractions: if you forget to put the apostrophe in, for example, ‘can’t', you end up writing ‘cant’.

We hope by now, therefore, that you can see the sense of avoiding writing it’s and instead using it is whenever possible:

It is my dog and ... Read more...