Practice - practise

Practice and practise are two often-confused homophones, closely related in meaning.

• A practice is a noun – something that you do, e.g. “there is a football practice tonight”; “I did 5 hours piano practice yesterday”; “my usual practice is to warm up for five minutes first”; “she is in General Practice”. (If you can say “a practice” in your sentence, then it is practice.)

• To practise is a verb – to do something, e.g. “I practised my vocabulary last night”; “he practised his speech in front of a mirror.”

If you find yourself unsure about which word to use, replace it in the sentence with 'advice' or 'advise'. These two are not homophones, so you can hear which you mean. Say "he advised his speech in front of a mirror": it may not make any sense, but you can tell that you mean 'advised' and not 'adviced'. (This is an example of a sentence that makes grammatical sense but is nonsense semantically.)