Difference between insure and ensure

This is part of the difference between series.

Having worked in a university for over 6 years, I’ve been exposed to a lot of academic writing. The only thing worse than academic writing is business writing. Considering I work in a faculty of management, I get to see the worst of both worlds. Apparently, there isn’t much in the way of grammar instruction in order to get a PhD.

Anyhow.

A common mistake I see in writing is the confusion of insure and ensure. For example:

Please insure everyone is invited to the meeting.

Never mind the wordiness and the passive voice, this sentence is saying something different from what was intended.

The speaker wants to make sure that everyone knows about an upcoming meeting. Unfortunately, using insure implies that the person to whom the command is given is to take out an insurance policy regarding the invitations.

Insure

Insure means to issue an insurance policy.

  • Before you move into your new house, you need to insure it.
  • You should insure yourself and your family against death and injury.

Ensure

Ensure, on the other hand, means to guarantee or make sure.

  • Please ensure everyone is invited to the meeting.
  • Ensure all dogs are kept on leash in city parks.

Some may disagree with this stance and claim the two terms are interchangeable, but I’m not willing to accept that quite yet. I am a proponent of clear, unambiguous sentences. By separating these two meanings, we encourage people to clearly say what they mean.

Let me know if you have any grammar questions, and I’ll be sure to post the question and answer here.

By Kim Siever

I am a copywriter and copyeditor. I blog on writing and social media tips mostly, but I sometimes throw in my thoughts about running a small business. Follow me on Twitter at @hotpepper.

5 comments

  1. Basically, insure, ensure, and assure mean to make a person or thing more sure. Insure should be restricted to providing or obtaining insurance to indemnify or guarantee someone or something against a loss. Ensure can be used in all other senses, especially ‘to make certain’. Ensure can also imply a guarantee. Then there is a third word, assure, which means to make a promise or convince. Assure also implies the removal of doubt and suspense within someone’s mind. Here are some examples of usage for assure, ensure, and insure: I assured him that I would not clean out his tool and hardware collection. She looked back to assure that no dogs were following her. / The government ensured the safety of the troops during the time they would be airlifted out of the country. We will ensure that the abusive coach will not return next year. / She was insured against loss in the homeowner’s policy. The valuables are insured.

  2. And for those who are sticklers for citing sources, Amit’s comment was entirely lifted from Dictionary.com.

  3. When you profess to know grammar and complain about the incorrect usage of words, how about following the rules yourself? I thought we were all taught that sentences begin with capital letters (see first paragraph of the post). Not to mention the fact that “Anyhow” by itself is not a sentence.

  4. I was reading this while drinking my Ensure and thought there was a bunch of effort put into all this.

  5. Please tell me how to use lay, laid, lain, lie, etc., in a way the I can remember it. Thx!

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