Practicing vs Practising

[faustus]

For some reason I've always been convinced that practice works like advice - I advise you, but I give you advice. You go to football practice - but you are practising football. (Are you or have you ever been a practising accountant or a practicing accountant? May be you'll get better. I'd write with an s. You'll be in a practice.)

The phrase in question is "practicing media theory" in the sense of undertaking, using a particular theory - but it just tastes wrong to me. (It's complicating by the need for it to have a second sense of the theory of how to do practice.)


Any thoughts?

Edit: This would be UK usage, in case there's a difference. Google gives Practising over Practicing by only few thousand.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I'm similarly convinced that it takes the s as a verb and c as a noun. Maybe your doubts come from the fact that the Merkins don't use the s form at all?

In the UK, when one is in practice as an accountant one requires a practising certificate. Tru fax.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly - see edit that crossed with your comment. Fowler MEPIII is at home, but often doesn't have entires for useful things like this.

Why oh why oh why do I always type entires for entries? I have it on autocorrect in words.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I've definitely seen the verb spelt both ways (although I can't now remember where I've seen each), but if one is to be preferred I'd expect it to be 's'.

However, what usually happens is that I automatically spell 'perform as a profession' with 's' and 'perform in order to improve'

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

(hit enter accidentally)

... with a 'c', then get confused and find some way of rephrasing.

I can look it up in the online OED but I suspect you've done that already.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

The OED gives 'practice' as the only spelling of the noun, but the verb is spelt both ways, and there are examples of 'practice' as a verb going back to 1500.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

I would tend to use "practising" for the verb and "practice" for the noun but the Americans use "practicing" for the verb, which always throws me (and gets a red underline here in ljville). For the British market I would go with "practising", which is less likely imo to throw up red flags with the copyeditor.