Do you get the spellings and meanings of "advice" and "advise" confused? Here's an easy memory trick. "Advise" is SPOKEN advice. If you're SPEAKING, you're ADVISING someone. Otherwise, use ADVICE with a C. It's that simple!
Source: Saw someone misuse the word on Facebook yesterday. It sparked memories of my long-ago English and vocabulary classes.
By Lelia Jo Cordell from Springfield, OH
Add your voice! Click below to comment. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!
One of my favorite subjects Jo.
I enjoy learning these kinds of grammar tips. Even when I know them though, I will often not be thinking, and my hands will type a word my fingers are in the habit of typing since I learned typing by grouping together series of letters. "TH" for instance, I might type "there" instead of "their" which is another often misused word. "There" is a place. "Their" denotes possessiveness. (Is that a word?) LOL
I think almost everyone knows what's right in this case, it's just how and what their hands are most used to typing. Our brains are strange and wonderful master organs and the experts are still learning what makes it work and how it works.
If we can count items, then we should use "more" and "fewer". If it's not something we can actually see to count, then we should use "less" and "more". For instance, I weigh "more" than Jo, but she makes "fewer" mistakes when writing. I cringe when even experts say something has "less" calories. Although you might know that a Hershey Candy Bar has "more" calories, you can't count them just by looking.
I see "its" and "it's" often misused. "Its is the possesive form of "it" and needs no apostrophe. "It's" is a contraction for "it is", and must have the apostrophe to take the place of the "i" in "is".
Creative writing classes teach that it is more important to get the thought down, then go back and do the proofreading to correct spelling and grammactical mistakes. In our haste to get a message "SENT", we so often don't or can't take the time for proofreading, so we see more mistakes in email than in any other place. I have an idea that 100 years from now, anyone picking up some of our email will think that we were all a bunch of untaught individuals. Either that, or they are going to be so ignorant that we'd not be able to read what they were writing at all.
The main thing is to be able to communicate and I suppose we are all doing a pretty good job of that.
Great tip about the words, "advise and advice" Jo. Now, if only I can teach my hands to remember it. LOL Our hands do "remember" when our brains relax and allow them to take over. All musicians know this. Sometimes, it's a good thing, but sometimes, it can get us into trouble when we're writing.
Pookarina
Jo, great tip. Thanks for sharing.
Pookarina, you have a point. "Muscle memory" does tend to take over. I'm far from a true musician, but used to be able to play a limited repertoire with reasonable accuracy. I also learned the "grouping" technique in typing class. And my unruly fingers still hit wrong keys sometimes. :P
Hey, you want to know something funny? My screen-reading program catches more typos and misspellings than even my eyes used to, lol!
I often see "loosing" when people mean "losing". The funniest is the CL posting for a "dinning" table.
These are all great tips, our written words sometimes are the first impression someone will have of us and they can speak volumes. Another good way to remember advice vs advise is that advice is a noun and advise is a verb.
I remember "Friends to the 'end", your Principal is your "pal", and even though most english teachers still teach it, you can't be fuller or fullest! Full is full, and you can't have any more.
But, there are still some cool tricks to keep in mind.
I remember "loose" has two "o's" like to loosen your belt buckle with more holes in it...
Dessert has two "s's" in it because you can be bigger than desert, if you eat too much.
But the cutest one I remember was in our school paper. One girl said "Did you know that sugar is the only "s" word that sounds like "sh"? The other girls says "Are you sure"?
Ah, memories!
Don't know if nouns and verbs are still taught today but when I was at school (a long time ago) I was taught that "advise" has the word "is" in it which is a doing word, i.e. a verb, so you advise somebody, for example. then "advice" has the word "ice" in it which is a noun, i.e. a naming word, so you give advice. Hope this helps.
Hmm, I knew the noun/verb element to the advice/advise difference, but couldn't quite word it right. Thanks, folks. Yes, what we see of folks online (here on TF and elsewhere) tells us a lot (see, I know how to type it correctly, lol!) about the writer's intelligence and education. Even my son gets careless on Facebook. He told me himself, it doesn't matter as much there because "everyone does it."
Another pet peeve of mine is "alright" rather than the correct "all right." Remember, folks, if a prospective employer googles your name for a good job and all the posts you have are riddled with errors, that could potentially do you out of a great opportunity. I'll step down off my soap box now.
It would help to eliminate a lot of mistakes if people would take few seconds to proof read what they just typed!
Add your voice! Click below to comment. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!
