h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Practise. With an 's', I think, in this case.

Possibly. Actually, having checked in my dictionary, one is a habitual action and the other is doing something to improve skill... so I guess either will do. Both most definitely apply to juggling...

Dictionary.com gives 'practice' - practise is listed as a synonym.

I know I would use a c in this context. How about our American cousins?

"Practise" is not Standard American English. You would get funny looks over here. This holds for all the other "c"/"s" variant words, none of which I can think of at the moment.

Actually, I did just think of one, but, since we're talking about English here, it's an *exception*: vice/vise, which are two totally different things in SAE. Although my dictionary lists the second def. of "vice" as the *British* variant of vise.

Exasperating language!

Another different spelling is pavement and sidewalk
Then there's always the one from the critics column in the papers which goes like "Phantom of the Opera - pronounced success!"

well i spell it with a "c"---> practice. but here in the US it does not really matter. though "practise" would be considered wrong in formal situations. here, if it looks wrong, it most likely is, but that is not always true. actually, there is one rule the american english follows when it comes to spelling, there is no rule. english takes words from other languages and just uses it. it sure does make it hard to know how to spell words correctly, damn thoes high school english teachers!

According to my dictionary:

Practice:
1. Action as opposed to theory
2. Custom
3. Repeated exercise to improve skill
4. Doctor or Lawyer's business

Practise:
1. Do something repeatedly or habitually
2. (Of a Doctor or Lawyer) perform professional work

So it appears they are quite different words...

It's really much simpler:
practice - noun e.g. "practice makes perfect"
practise - verb e.g. " You need to practise if you want to do it perfectly"

In practice, I always aim to practise what I preach

btw - this rule applies to almost all words with similar confusions (like licence, license for example)

Not according to dictionary.com and Webster's unabridged, where practice is the regular spelling and practise is an alternative. It lists both verb and noun forms under practice.

Urk.

Complications, eh? Life seems to be full of them...

Dictionary.com is probably American. Websters certainnly is.

In the UK, practise is a verb and practice is a noun.

There are exceptions to every rule of course, in this case in the above sentence they're both nouns.

I'd just like to criticise my own post for spelling the word "certainly" incorrectly.

Is this a "My dictionary is better than your dictionary," sort of a fight or can any Tome, Dick or Thesaurus join in?

How does your dictionary deal with thru/through color/colour?

Do you "beat up on someone" or do you "beat someone up"?

The police will be notified if you answer yes to either of the above.

In standard English spelling, 'Practice' is spelled with a 'c' if it is being used as a noun, and with an 's' if being used as a verb.

For example, you would say "The practice of juggling" (noun phrase), but "I practise juggling" (verb phrase).

In the case of the guide entry, the sentence is most likely to be a verb phrase, considering the structure of the other two points (i.e. vocative instructions).

This use is, however, going out of fashion. A bit like correct apostrophe use...

Surely it's no use referring to dictionaries for correct spelling of a word - especially American ones if they make no distinction between the two forms. It's the context that matters.

Anyway, we're not really talking about spelling here - more of just using the wrong word in the context of the rest of the sentence (i.e. deer/dear or read/reed - they're all correctly spelled, but just inappropriate in some sentence constructions).

I preferred it when it looked like they were going to hit each other.

...And in the blue corner, we have the Complete Oxford English Dictionary, with free magnifying glass, weighing in at just over 39 pounds...

Should you spell the other corner "r-e-a-d"?

Not fair. I want a free magnifying glass. In fact I want three, so I can practise juggling with them.