The word is....

I saw a cute picture of a kitten this morning and thought: it looks as if it's sucking its thumb.

jeni...and that would affect the effect on my decision making....

I am re-reading Claire Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen and have been reminded that they pronounced join as jine.

I would advise you to follow my advice?

People often get advice wrong too.

Ah. Didn't know that. Thank you. But, accidents or not, they are pronounced the same and it causes problems. What I'm wondering is if the American practice of spelling both noun and verb the same way undermines understanding at all. If it doesn't, then what the hell?

Bags , use the analogy of advice (noun) and advise (verb); prophecy (noun) and prophesy (verb). I seems to be an accident of history that practice and practise are pronounced the same way.

I have to think about practice and practise every time I use them. I can get it right because I know one is a noun and one is a verb, but I still get it wrong sometimes because of 'keyboarding error' . Then I'm embarassed when I see my mistake. Which makes me think there's a case for following the Americans and abandoning the practice of spelling the verb practise.

em In the US, it's always spelt practice, whether it's a verb or a noun. Practise is just regarded as an English usage.

You get a tick for that,*jeni*.

I was in general practice and I practise the harp?

How do you feel about practice/practise? Doesn't help that USA spelling and usage is the opposite of ours.
Notso I 'm trying to imagine what you thought she meant!

Glad this has been received well so far, I was a tad nervous!

Oh, spellings. Right.

Definitely! My advice to my students who almost invariably spelt it wrongly was to think of the word 'finite'. Nobody spells it 'finate' - at least I hope not.

I think we can all live with that phoenix