Practice or Practise? What’s the Difference?!

Just like in the earlier video, let’s first take a look at how the two words are used in the following sentences:

1. You have to practise for many hours in order to be good at something
2. My father has a strange practice of reading the last page of a book first, before going back to the beginning.

As you can see, in the first sentence, it is something you DO regularly or repeatedly, making it an action, or a verb. Notice how the word is spelt with an ‘s’.

In the second example, it’s something that is usually or regularly done, like a habit, tradition or custom, making it a thing, or a noun. In this case, the word is spelt with a ‘c’.

How do you remember how to tell the practise and practice apart? One easy mnemonic device you can use is to remember that ‘ice’ is a noun, and therefore, ‘practice’ which contains the word ‘ice’ is a noun. Easy right?

Hence, to decide which word to use, you should ask yourself which form of the word you are referring to. Are you referring to a regular action, for example, He practises playing the piano daily? In this instance, you will need the verb form of the word and hence will spell ‘practise’ with an ‘s’. Or are you referring to a habit or something that is done regularly, for instance, He goes for piano practice every afternoon? Here, you are using the noun form of the word and will need to spell it with a ‘c’.

What better way to check your understanding than to have some practice (a noun!)! To see if you have understood the difference between ‘practice’ and ‘practise’, try the following questions:

1. My teacher told me that I needed to (practice / practise) doing more problem sums in order to improve my mathematics grade.
2. Now that you have studied all about building a computer, it is time to put the skill to (practice / practise).
3. The girl (practices / practises) the violin diligently. Her long (practices / practises) usually last about four hours.

Did you manage to choose the correct option? Let’s check your answers now!

1. My teacher told me that I needed to (practice / practise) doing more problem sums in order to improve my mathematics grade.

Here, the clue is ‘needed to’, which signals that it is an action that I should perform repeatedly in order to improve.

2. Now that you have studied all about building a computer, it is time to put the skill to (practice / practise).

In this sentence, the noun form is required because it refers to the application or use of an idea or belief, in this case, the skill of learning how to build a computer.

3. The girl (practices / practises) the violin diligently. Her long (practices / practises) usually last about four hours.

In this example, the girl does the action of playing the violin. Her long practices will refer to the times that she played the violin, which makes it a noun! Did you notice the word “long” before the word “practice”? Since it is common for an adjective to appear before a noun it is describing, it is an additional clue that we need to use practice, the noun, here.

Before I go, let’s summarise what we have learnt today. ‘Practice’ and ‘practise’ are two different forms of the word and should not be used interchangeably. When the word is spelt with a ’c’, it is to refer to the noun form while the word spelled with an ’s’ shows that it is being used as a verb.

I hope this has helped you to differentiate yet another 2 commonly confused words. What other 2 words do you have difficulty differentiating? Tell us in the comments section so we can help you sort them out!