Spelling traps – licence/license and practice/practise
Image: Peter Shanks via Flickr (cc)
The closest competitors for the stationary/stationery pairing (one of which, hopefully the correct one, you’ll find in my article above) for the title of Most Confused Spelling are the practice/practise and licence/license combinations.
Practice is a noun and practise is a verb. Seems straightforward enough, doesn’t it? Yet I find it rendered so randomly that I often have to remind myself which is correct.
The Americans don’t have this problem – they just use practice for both. Good for them.
And they do the same for license, using one spelling for everything. And no, I don’t know why they use an s at the end of license and a c at the end of practice. They just do.
So, cut this out and stick it to your monitor:
‘I lost my licence to kill’ (noun)
but,
‘I am licensed to kill’. (verb)
And, ‘I’m late for karate practice’ (noun)
but,
‘I practise karate’. (verb)
And don’t even start me on defence/defense.
