I’ve written a ton of process instructions over the years and have used “ensure” about a jillion times. I must have said it aloud at some point, but I can’t remember when or where. For what it is worth, I have had several heated discussions with people who were positive I meant “insure.”
Definitely “ensure”. I can’t stand when people use “insure” in this context. It’s wrong! And I see this mistake made by people who should know better.
I argued long and hard with a friend who told me that the word “TIPS”, as in what you give the waitstaff in a restaurant at the end of a meal, stood for “To Insure Proper Service”. I insisted that the usage of the word insure in this context was not correct.
I was a bit confused when I actually saw in a couple of places that Tips was the abovementioned acronym!
Can anybody shed any light on this?
How about a rule of thumb for Assure and Ensure?
That TIP acronym is nonsense; no one knows exactlywhere the word “tip” for “gratuity” came from, but it’s not an acronym. (I suspect it may come from the obsolete “tippler,” or barkeep).
As I said, “those who care about strict usage” restrict “insure” to its financial meaning. While I pay little regard to those who don’t care about strict usage, the fact remains that the majority of Americans use ‘insure’ interchangeably with ‘ensure,’ and any non-American reading the word ‘insure’ would be ill-advised to assume that ‘ensure’ is not meant.
Finally, “assure” means “to give assurance.” That is, one assures (promises) a person or organization that something is true or will happen. British usage includes a meaning not unlike that of “insure” (they have ‘assurance’ firms over there), but American usgae is strictly in the “promise” vein.
Re: myriad
I have a 1970 vintage dictionary here and the first definition for myriad is a noun - either ten thousand or an immense number. The second def is an adjective - innumerable, multitudinous