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“Advise” vs “advice”

I've seen twice in in 30 minutes how someone had said that they wanted advise on [...] subject, or how they needed advise on [...].

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In both American and British English, 'advice' is the noun and 'advise' is the verb. Both your examples are incorrect, because they use 'advise' as a noun. It would be correct to say "I want/need to be advised on X" or "I want/need advice on X".

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  • The point of mentioning American and British English being that other words (for example 'licence') do behave differently in the two. – Colin Fine Nov 11 '10 at 18:14
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Aside from the issue of advise vs advice (a Verb form vs. a noun form), there is also an issue of verb-agreement:

"I've seen twice in in 30 minutes how someone had said that they wanted on advise on [ ] subject, or how they needed advise on"

How someone had said is incorrect. Instead, it should be has said.

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    There is nothing wrong with the verb agreement (that's a difference of tense, not agreement) and for me at least "has said" doesn't work there. "said" or "had said" are both OK, with very little difference of meaning in this case. – Colin Fine Nov 11 '10 at 18:12
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    "How" on the other hand is non-standard as a subordinator. It is colloquial, and to my ears distinctly American. – Colin Fine Nov 11 '10 at 18:13

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