Advice or Advise

Should you be giving advice or advise ? Actually neither. One is grammatically incorrect. And the other would be wasted.

I have a general rule of not giving advise. That is because in my experience, people hear what you say, but only listen to what they want. And its very rarely what you're saying.

This week was an exception. There were 2 occasions when I felt that it would be a good idea to break my rule and give some, what I believed was well meaning advice. And once again I was wrong. It was a wasted effort.

And so the question that presents itself, "When do we need advise ?" and "When should we give advice ?". And for a change, the answers are reasonably simple.

So when do we really need advice ? The answer is probably, "Always". We could all do with some good advice. Others see what we don't and so getting  their perspective could be extremely useful.

It's my experience we should only consider giving advice, when specifically asked for it. Even then on most occasions, what is being sought is an endorsement of their opinion,, but the probability of them evaluating your opinion when they've asked for it are reasonably high.

And interestingly enough, if some of the above is correct, chances are you would continue to use your judgement on if and when to give advice. And what works, is what's right.