Hi, Tom.  I need your advice on the upcoming sales strategy meeting. 

Uh, Sure Jay. I’ll be happy to advise you. 

Thank you, Tom.

Now what do I do?  I know I’ll call Annie in the UK office.

Hi, Tom. How are things in the home office?

Well, sort of okay. Except Jay just asked me for advice on his upcoming sales presentation to the whole company. Please advise me.  What should I tell him? Do you have any thoughts?

Yes. In fact, I know what you should tell Jay. Advise him to wear a clown costume. That’ll get everyone’s attention. 

A clown costume? You think that’s good advice?

I know it is. Offer that advice, because if he wears a silly clown outfit, he’ll get praise from senior management for creativity in his sales presentation.

I don’t know about that. I think I should advise him to keep the talk simple and focus on the top sales figures.

No, trust me. he clown costume is a win win. It will start his presentation with a laugh. He’ll gain everyone’s full attention. The company president’s going to love it. And you’ll get on. Jay’s good side.

Hello, everybody. I want to start off today with an important… Really, let’s focus on our sales figures for…

Boo….

I can’t believe you actually gave him that piece of advice. What an idiot.

But it was your idea.

I was just joking. I would never advise anyone to do that.

But you said…

Tom, my office now!

I think you were a little gullible there, my friend. 

Yes. Annie certainly got the better of me with that unprofessional advice. But I’ll get her back someday.

Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. In the meantime, let’s make sure everyone understands the difference between advice and advise.

Let’s start with the most basic difference. Advise is a verb. Advice is a noun. Advise means to give advice or to recommend. It’s a transitive verb, which means that it is always followed directly by the person who’s receiving the advice.

Advise him to wear a clown costume.

‘Him’ refers to Jay, the receiver of the advice.

Advise follows the word please when used in a request for guidance or information.

And finally, pronunciation. Notice that the stress is on the second syllable. Advise.

Now let’s take a closer look at advice.

Advice means an opinion that is recommended. 

We know it’s a noun, but what kind of noun?

It’s an uncountable noun, which means it doesn’t have a plural form. So ‘advices’ is always incorrect. If you want to communicate advice in a singular form, you can proceed it with ‘a piece of’ or ‘a bit of.’

It’s also common to proceed the word advice with ‘some’ or a possessive pronoun like my,‘your, his, her. 

Advice is often used with the verbs give, offer, provide, seek, ask for and follow. 

We can modify the quality of the advice with good, bad, professional, unsolicited, excellent, unwanted.

And finally, pronunciation. Notice that just like the verb form advise, advice also has the stress on the second syllable, but the c sound is like an s. Exactly the same as how we  pronounce the words ice or rice.

And that’s it. Let us know your thoughts about advise and advice in the comments. Next up on simple English videos, we’ll look at another couple of words that sound similar but have different meanings. Stay tuned.

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Bye now.