Tuesday, October 27, 2009

This Blog Needs An Ensurance Policy (Against Aggrieved Authors AND Readers)!

If assure, ensure, and insure all mean the same thing: "To make certain of something," what's the big deal? If this is (fair & balanced) theoretical lexicography, so be it.

[x CJR]
Assurance Policy
By Merrill Perlman

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In Washington, legislators are trying to “assure” their constituents that they are working to “ensure” that any new health-care bill will “insure” them.

All three of these transitive verbs mean the same thing: To make certain of something. (Surely you knew that.)

But there are subtle differences as well, which have evolved over the years.

Let’s start with the (relatively) easy one: “Assure.” It’s a transitive verb, to be sure, but its object should be personal—“I assure you” about something. You shouldn’t “assure” an inanimate object of anything. Yet many times “assure” is used when “ensure” is meant, as in “a new health insurance bill is supposed to assure that all people are covered.” Though Garner’s Modern American Usage says the substitution of “assure” when “ensure” is meant is “ubiquitous but …” (the verbatim Language-Change Index rating, meaning no one will be able to stop it, wrong though it may appear), the substitution does not appear frequently at all nowadays.

The differences between “insure” and “ensure” are also open to debate. “Insure,” some people say, must be used only where someone makes a legal wager that something will happen or not happen. People pay premiums for “life insurance” policies to ease the financial damage to their heirs; some financial companies have created complicated financial instruments that “insure” them against loss (though that bet did not pay off for many).

“Ensure,” some people say, should be used when the “assurance” is neither personal nor financial: “I will ensure that the next health-care bill will cover flu shots.”

The British did and do use “assure” in financial contexts where we Yankees would use “insure,” though Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (second edition) pooh-poohed the usage. (Fowler did, however, distinguish between “life assurance,” which was “assured” of paying off eventually, and “term insurance,” which was a bet that someone would not die within a specified period.)

For many years “ensure” was viewed as a Britishism, possibly because of the “en” prefix, which sounds so, um, British. Until 1999, in fact, The New York Times mandated “insure” in both financial and nonfinancial contexts, though one of its main style gurus, Theodore M. Bernstein, was sure that there was no difference between the two words.

Nowadays, most usage authorities “assure” us that “insure” for “ensure” is perfectly fine: Garner’s supports “insure” only in financial contexts such as “life insurance,” but the Language-Change Index acknowledges the ubiquity of “insure” for “ensure.” Using “ensure” in financial contexts to mean “insure,” though, is just plain wrong. For sure, while “assurance” and “insurance” are perfectly acceptable noun forms, “ensurance” simply doesn’t exist. But rest “assured”: Writers, for the most part, have “ensured” against its appearance. Ω

[Merrill Perlman is a consultant who works with news organizations, private companies and journalism organizations, specializing in editing and the English language. She spent 25 years at The New York Times in jobs ranging from copy editor to director of copy desks, in charge of all 150-plus copy editors at The Times. Before going to The Times, she was a copy editor and assistant business editor at the Des Moines Register. Previous to that, she was a reporter and copy editor at the Southern Illinoisan newspaper. She has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a master of arts in mass communication from Drake University.]

Copyright © 2009 Columbia Journalism Review

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This Year's Dream Nightmare Team!

Sparky the Wonder Penguin and his trusty sidekick, Blinky the Dog, are tricked out for a Halloween party. Spark is going as The Mighty Quinnette, Rogue of the North, and Blinky is going as Dingbat Bachmann, Wacko from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Some sage once said that we get the leaders we deserve. Woe to the Land O'The Free and the Home O'The Brave should we see this pair of True Republican Women elected to the highest offices in the land. Their campaign theme should be "Play Misty For Me." If this is (fair & balanced) horror, so be it.

[x Salon]
This Modern World — "Trick Or Treat"
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

Click on image to enlarge. Ω

Tom Tomorrow/Dan Perkins

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Salon and Working for Change. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly.

Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002.

When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political weblog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001.]

Copyright © 2009 Salon Media Group

Get the Google Reader at no cost from Google. Click on this link to go on a tour of the Google Reader. If you read a lot of blogs, load Reader with your regular sites, then check them all on one page. The Reader's share function lets you publicize your favorite posts.

Copyright © 2009 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves