A friend sent me this note recently:

In your ongoing mission to rid the world of grammatical dumbassery have you yet covered advise/advice? I see it frequently — twice in the last 12 hours. I just want to cry for humanity…

I often want to shed tears too, but let’s save that for another time and focus on the task at hand — advice vs. advise.

Advice is a noun that means “an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct, etc.” or “a communication, especially from a distance, containing information.”

Advise, however, is a verb meaning “to give counsel to” or “to give information” or “to take counsel or consult.”

So there you have it. One word is a verb and one is a noun and there should be no reason to confuse, especially since they not only are spelled differently, they are pronounced differently too.