Tag Archives: business writing

When is it practice vs practise? (and why the education system gets it confused)

Posted in Grammar Tips, Teaching tips by

I noticed this week that I was getting annoyed that one of my teaching textbooks consistently uses “practice” every time, when they actually should be using the verb “practise” in some sentences.

How do you know when to use practice or practise?

To practise is a verb that means you’re doing the same action or process over and over, usually over time, to get better at that action or process. For example:

  • “I practise the flute once every 6 months, just to remind myself that I still know how to play it.”
  • “It’s good for young students need to practise their times tables every day at first, so that they can remember the answers automatically when they’re solving other maths problems.”

A practice is a noun (a place, object, thing), and people use this word to mean of two things:

  1. A practice can be a company you work for, or a place you work at, like a medical clinic or a legal firm.
    • “My friend wants to open their own practice one day, but it’s quite expensive to rent out an office space.”
  2. A practice can be a collection of ideas that someone has brought together and it’s become their method or their philosophy of how they work.
    • “The practice of applying new technologies to old problems is a great way to motivate students to learn about a topic.”

How to remember when to say practise or practice

So how do you remember whether you need to write practise with a c or an s in the sentence you’re writing? Here’s a few different tips on how to remember it, because I know everyone’s brain works a little differently!

What letter do I use?

The word “practice” uses the letter c because it’s a “collection of people or ideas”.

  • For example, the practice of medicine is a collection of ideas about how the human body works.
  • And a legal practice is a collection of people who get paid a lot of money to write very boring but important documents.

What does it sound like?

Another tip is that if you think about when you were a little kid, sounding out words one letter at a time, the sound of the two words will usually help you pick one that “just sounds right”:

  • “I’m practising my teaching skills.” sounds right when I use the “sssss” sound, which means the letter s.
  • “I’m practicking my teaching skills.” sounds funny when I use the “ck” sound, which means the letter c.

Can I avoid having to remember?

Yes! I find the easiest way to remember when to use practice vs practise it is to stop using the word “practice” altogether.

Because no matter which of the two meanings above you need for “practice”, you can almost always replace “practice” with a clearer word or just delete it entirely.

For example, let’s reword the above two examples to be clearer, by replacing or removing the word “practice”:

  • “My friend wants to open their own legal firm one day, but it’s quite expensive to rent out an office space.”
  • “Applying new technologies to old problems is a great way to motivate students to learn about a topic.”
    • …or let’s simplify it and add an example, to be even clearer: “Students are much more interested in learning when you let them apply new technology like ChatGPT to old problems like research and writing.”

And as always, remember, English doesn’t have the easiest spelling and grammar rules to learn, even if it’s your first language. So if you’ve been confused by practise vs practice, don’t feel bad!

Comment down below – what’s something you enjoy practising?

Have you learned any new skills lately?

I learned how to crochet recently, and so far, I’ve made a very short scarf!

This image shows a photo of TJ wearing the scarf.
Image description: A selfie of TJ wearing a very short scarf, crocheted using rainbow chenille wool. It looks fluffy and soft, but kind of lumpy. 😂

Are we ready for 2024? How to write dates (Australian style guide)

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It’s almost time to say happy new year and good riddance to 2023, so here’s how to write about dates and years in 2024.

cats sitting next to a window, looking out at fireworks in the night sky, AI image generated by Gencraft.com

This is based on the Australian government’s style manual and the most common usage that I’ve seen over the past few years as an editor of digital content.

The longest day of the year is fast approaching… or on the other side of the world, their shortest day of the world! So I thought we’d talk about how to write dates and days correctly in business writing.

(Image source: AI artwork of cats sitting next to window, watching fireworks, generated using Gencraft.com.)

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Years old vs year-old vs age vs aged vs years of age

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Today is all about how we talk about how many years old something or someone is, or how many years in a row we’ve won an award.

When is it “years old” vs “#-year-old”?

“Years old” is the most common and most reader-friendly way of talking about how old something or someone is (in Australian English).

e.g. CompanyX is more than 100 years old.

You always use hyphens for “#-year-old” because it is either used as an adjective (similar to how you put a hyphen in “award-winning”) … or it is a noun on its own (in which case it is a compound word, two or more words stuck together).

Not using hyphens here is a common mistake.

e.g. Adjective: CompanyX is the largest 100-year-old organisation in Queensland.

e.g. Noun: My 2-year-old is very tall for her age.

When is it “age” vs “aged” vs “years of age”?

Beware of using “age” when you could be using the reader-friendly phrase “years old” instead. I always used to see this often when updating our member-facing forms; it would say “If you are age 55 / 60 / etc.” instead of “If you’re 55 years old”.

e.g. If you are aged 55 years or over, please fill in this part of the form. >>> For readability, it’s easier to say “If you are 55 years old or over”.

e.g. Start planning your retirement before you reach the usual age for stopping work.

e.g. My daughter is only 2 years of age, so she’s not thinking about retirement yet. She is not yet of an age to retire. >>> For readability, it’s easier to say “only 2 years old”.

e.g. This coming-of-age novel is a good read.

Lastly, “year” and “years” can be used in a few different ways.

e.g. CompanyX has won the Platinum rating from SuperRatings for more than 10 years in a row.

e.g. In the year 2020, lots of people began working from home, and it was also my third year working at CompanyX.

e.g. CompanyX has been taking care of clients for more than 100 years.

e.g. Our current investment approach was initiated around 10 years ago, after the GFC.

e.g. You could say someone is wise beyond their years.

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Image source: Collegedunia.com

Any other ways of talking about time and age that you’ve seen tripping people up?

(C) TJ Withers-Ryan, 2022. Please credit me when you share or repost. Thanks!

Who vs Whom

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Another request: who vs whom.

I think most people, whenever they think about using “whom” in a written sentence, stop and wonder whether they’re doing it right.

Psychological reassurance: The reality is that this is one case where you can probably relax, because most people speak English differently to how we write English. If you write “who” every time, it’ll look fine, because this is almost always the word people use when we’re speaking. Because “whom” sounds pompous out loud, almost nobody says it, even when grammatically they should. So when you write “who”, even if it should be “whom”, most people reading it will think, “Yeah, I’d say ‘who’. That looks fine to me.”

But if you still really care about writing it correctly, then let’s get word nerdy!

Image source: Cata memes.
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Is data plural or singular?

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Request of the day today is about the word “data”.

The companies I’ve worked for in the past ~8 years in the finance industry involve a lot of data, and we have to talk about it a lot, depending on your role in the corporate world.

Is data singular, or plural, or other?

In Australia, “data” is treated as a mass collective noun that you treat as singular, just like “information”.

e.g. The data was collected. There wasn’t much data available.

>>> In this sentence, we use the singular words “was” and “much” instead of the plurals “were” and “many”.

(This bit is in brackets because it’s not essential reading: I tried really hard to think of a way to explain what a mass collective noun is, but couldn’t think of anything clever. Basically, it is a noun for a group or a volume of things where you can’t count that noun. You can’t say one data, two datas.)

In addition to being a noun, you can also use “data” as an adjective.

e.g. ProgramX is a data system. (adjective + noun) This means it is a system that collects, stores, and uses data. (noun)

Why data changed from being plural to mass collective/singular over time

Historically, “data” was a Latin word that was the plural of “datum”. (A single point of data is a datum.)

For this reason, some traditionalists in the USA like to still use “data” in its Latin (plural) form.

e.g. The data were collected, but there was one point of datum that I want to talk about.

But we don’t do that here in Australia.

From about the 1900s, common usage has evolved, and even the Oxford English Dictionary accepts that we now use “data” as mass collective/singular.

Bonus word of the day:

There’s another Latin word that we have transformed from “plural >>> singular” over time: your “agenda” for a meeting.

In Latin, “agendum” is singular and “agenda” is plural, but in English, we don’t say “agendum”.

We say “agenda” and we treat it as “singular”.

e.g. The agenda (singular) for that meeting was long, and the items (plural) on the agenda were boring.

C:\Users\tjryan\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.MSO\1503476B.tmp
Image source: MemeGenerator / Star Trek.

(C) TJ Withers-Ryan, 2022. Please credit me when you share of repost. Thanks!

Punctuation in bullet points and numbered lists

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If you’ve ever had *that* discussion with a colleague about how to use punctuation in bullet points or numbered lists – and I know you have, because you asked me to post about it – then you’ll know it’s a controversial topic.

Image source: Photo by Karen Su, Lonely Planet; meme from QuickMemes.

That’s why it’s spelled out in most of the major style guides. This post details the punctuation rules for the style guides I’ve written for various companies, based on AP Style (used by journalists), Macquarie style, Oxford style, and a few others.

Why care about whether your bullet points and numbered lists have punctuation, “and/or”s, and the like?

Because all of this affects readability, and y’all know, we live in the Golden Age of Skimreading. Readability is king.

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When do you put a comma before “and” or “or”?

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The Oxford comma is when you put a comma before “and” or “or” or another conjunction, at the end of a list of three or more items.

e.g. I like to read books, write books, and talk about books.

e.g. I like to read, write, but not talk about books.

The Oxford comma is a special comma guidelines used by a lot of style guides here in Australia, including the style guides at QSuper and Canstar, which I wrote during my time there.

Why use the Oxford comma?

There are three reasons to use the Oxford comma:

  1. Makes a sentence clearer if there are multiple “and”s.
  2. Without the comma, the end of the sentence can become the observer/receiver of the sentence (incorrectly).
  3. Without the comma, the end of the sentence can become a descriptive clause (incorrectly).
Image source: SayingImages.com

Using commas to make sentences easier to read

First, the Oxford comma is helpful because it separates the last item in the list from the second-last item, making the sentence clearer.

Here’s a comparison of using the Oxford comma vs not using it:

e.g. With the comma: QSuper now offers multiple different types of insurance, including death, total and permanent disability, and income protection cover.

e.g. Without the comma – less clear: QSuper now offers multiple different types of insurance, including death, total and permanent disability and income protection cover.

Using commas to keep sentences correct

Secondly, the Oxford comma is helpful because without the last comma, it can seem as if the end two items of the list are the observer or receiver of your sentence. An example can explain this better than I can:

e.g. With the comma: I love my pets, family, and friends.

e.g. Without the comma: I love my pets, family and friends. >>> You are actually telling your family and friends that you love your pets, i.e. “Family and friends, I love my pets.”

Thirdly, the Oxford comma is helpful because without it, it can seem as if the end two items of a list are describing the rest of the sentence (“a descriptive clause”, if you want to get nerdy).

e.g. With the comma: I love my pets, Mum, and Dad.

e.g. Without the comma: I love my pets, Mum and Dad. >>> I am saying that Mum and Dad are my pets, and they would really not be happy about that.

Why is it called the Oxford comma?

Now let’s get really nerdy! The “Oxford” comma is called by this name because it was traditionally used by the Oxford University Press editors and printers.

They also called it the “serial comma” because it’s used for lists, but since “serial” makes me think of serial killers, I don’t use that name.

Now, the Oxford Style Guide themselves dropped the “requirement” for an Oxford comma in all cases in 2011, and made it a guideline instead.

But there are still got many good reasons to use the Oxford comma, so I’m happy it’s sticking around.

As far as I’m concerned, there are three scenarios: using the Oxford comma correctly, not using the Oxford comma and being wrong.

(Joke. But seriously, it physically hurt me not to put the comma there.)

(C) TJ Withers-Ryan, 2022. Please credit me when you repost or share. Thanks!

Bare With vs Bear With

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This is probably the most hilarious post we’ll ever see on this page – and I’m keeping it PG on purpose so just… What can I say?

Think clean.

Image source: icanhascheezburger.com

Is it ‘bare with me’ or ‘bear with me’?

“bare” = not clothed, simple, uncovered.

e.g. They bared their soul with me by talking about their childhood, and I appreciate it.

e.g. They got bare with me, and we went skinny dipping.

So if we were to say “bare with me”, just make really, really sure that you actually want something to be undressed or uncovered…

“to bear” = to be patient / to hold up under pressure / to hold on during adversity.

e.g. We’re asking you to bear with us while we make our decision.

e.g. I can’t bear the humiliation.

So if we were to say “bear with me”, we would be asking someone to be patient with us while we talk something through with them, take a while to find some information for them, ask them more questions, etc.

(C) TJ Withers-Ryan, 2022. Please credit me when you share or repost, thanks!

Where does the full stop go when there’s other punctuation?

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When I used to run business writing training for teams at QSuper to learn the company’s written style and tone of voice, people always asked me to explain where the full stop goes when you have other punctuation at the end of a sentence.

It’s also a common mistake I’ve seen people get wrong a lot, whether they’re writing for business or fiction authors.

This mainly happens with brackets and quotation marks, so that’s what I’ll cover here. Comment down below if you have other full stop questions you want to ask about!

Image source: icanhascheezburger.com (Excuse the lack of full stop in this meme. 😉 )

Where does the full stop go?

A full stop always, always, always goes at the end of a full sentence.

So you need to ask yourself, is the thing inside the “quotation marks” or (brackets) or other punctuation a full sentence on its own?

Does it make sense if you put it alone and give it its own full stop?

e.g. When I used to run training for the company style guide (which I helped write), I had a lot of fun.

>>> Can you see how (which I helped write) is not a full sentence on its own? Writing (Which I helped write.) wouldn’t make sense.

So the full stop needs to go at the end of the sentence, not within the brackets.

Where does the full stop go, inside or outside the quotation marks?

If the quote is a complete sentence on its own, it gets its own full stop within the quotation marks.

e.g. The Minister said, “Super is awesome.”

Where the quote is just a clause – not a full sentence – the full stop goes at the very end, after any quotation marks or brackets.

e.g. The Minister said the superannuation industry was “changing quickly”.

>>> “changing quickly” is not a full sentence, so the sentence needs to go outside the quotation marks.

Where does the full stop go, inside or outside the brackets?

If the bracketed phrase is a complete sentence on its own, it gets its own full stop inside the brackets.

e.g. QSuper offers different types of insurance. (At the time of writing, these are death cover, TPD cover, and IP cover.)

Where the quote or bracketed phrase is just a clause – it’s not a full sentence – the full stop goes at the very end, after the brackets.

e.g. QSuper offers different types of insurance at the time of writing (death cover, TPD cover, and IP cover).

(C) TJ Withers-Ryan, 2022. Please credit me when you share or repost, thanks!