advice/s

it looks like a typo to me. i've never heard "advices" used as a plural.

in fact it should probably be "advice and assistance" not "assistances." funny seeing that on a cambridge site.

"advices and assistances" must be a mistake. It should be advice and assistance.

Hi

The following is extracted from what is found in the contents of the link.

Specialised Research
#
Summarise general situations and common difficulties for students in graduate, undergraduate, A-Levels and GCSE courses, and provide advices and assistances to individual cases.

'advices' and assistances - I'm confused.

I will give further links to show that 'advices' can be found.

Don't care what the links say. I would never use "advices" or "assistances." In addition, Webster's dictionary has "advice" and "assistance." No s for the plural.

It's possible that it's a British thing. The quote is clearly British English.

Thanks, Roberta.

My British English dictionaries and British English usage books all say 'advice', never 'advices'.

imo that is a bogus site, actually pathetic is a better word

I suspect that what they're trying to say is something like: you give advice and assistance to each individual. Each individual will get different advice and different assistance, depending on his/her individual needs. So, since they are all different, collectively those are "advices and assistances"--I think they're asking for a series of kinds of advice given for particular circumstances--remember those cases of plurals of non-count nouns: "My lawn has grass. My neighbor's lawn has grass. All the lawns on my block have grass. All the lawns in my city have grass" (not "grasses"). But you can talk about "grasses", like ryegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, etc. And I think by analogy that's what they mean by "advices", but as others have pointed out it's a really strange usage, and either idiosyncratic to the person who wrote it or some sort of specialized jargon of some particularly jargonistic section of, what, a grad school of education?

Ah, yes, I scrolled back and it is indeed apparently an ed school. So you can't consider it representative of actual English.

I think it might be some word that lawyers use as a part of their occupational lexicon. It's not gernerally used in normal english though. It's like the term "monies," which is a pluralized form of the word "money." It is incorrect under normal circumstances, but in legal jargon, it has some meaning, I guess.

Or maybe they just made it up to sound all fancy-shmancy.

Re: advice/s


That would be kissing and telling, cousin.

That "k" must have been bugging you

Hi

What about the site below? Is the source authoritative enough? It states 'advices'.

http://www.answers.com/topic/advice?cat=biz-fin&method=26&initiator=FFANS

Many thanks.

Yoong Liat
Advice is a noun with no plural. Would you like me to find a source to show you?

Hi TTH

Yes, please. The more authoritative the source, the better.

Many thanks.

To me, this is a reliable source........

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?dict=CALD&key=1237
"advice
noun "

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/help/codes.htm
" Uncountable or singular noun: a noun that has no plural."

Hope that helps....

Thanks. TTH, but what do you think of the other person's sites, authoritative or otherwise?

I think it is time for me to go to bed. So, good night Yoong Liat

Sweet dreams, my friend.

It is not uncommon to see "advices" in a certain style of writing. It is a bit archaic, a little bit old-fashioned maybe, but none the worse for that. It is not wrong.

It is immaterial whether Americans understand it or not.



Nearly six million hits are showing for "advices" on Google.