To practise or to practice: that is the question. How we should write this word is a bit of a dilemma, given that readers come from various pa
rts of the world. For an American the spelling of ‘practice’ remains the same whether using it as a noun or a verb. For most non-American English speaking countries, it is correct to spell it practice when it is used as a noun, but practise (practised, practising) when using it as a verb. As New Zealanders we try to stick to this convention (and mostly we are consistent 🙂 ).
For the same reason, you will likely find us spelling ‘color’ colour, ‘realize’ realise, ‘dialog’ dialogue, ‘enroll’ enrol, ‘meter’ metre, and so on. Please don’t hold this practice against us!
Perhaps this would be a good place to list some other North American/British equivalents which particularly relate to music. We reserve the right to use either (pronounced ee-ther or I-ther) or both.
UK USA
Stave/staff staff
Bar measure
Bar line bar (or bar line)
Breve double whole
Semibreve whole note
Minim half note
Crotchet quarter note
Quaver eighth note
Semiquaver sixteenth note
Demisemiquaver thirtysecond
(Whole) tone whole step
Semitone half step