How a Car Wash Led to a Grammar Lesson †and a Valentine’s Day Life Lesson

How a Car Wash Led to a Grammar Lesson – and a Valentine’s Day Life Lesson A Car Washing Adventure From time to time it is necessary, living in a snowy city, to give my car a respite from the salt that eats away at it for much of the winter.   During my last visit to Octopus Car Wash, as I waited for my car to get spit out the other end of the car wash, I discovered a wall full of greeting cards, many of them by a local Wisconsin greeting card company, Byrne Schmidt Greetings. What a great idea!   I love browsing humorous and clever greeting cards and went to work picking out cards to give to my friends and family for upcoming holidays. Leave it to me to find a grammar issue in one of the birthday cards. Squirrely Grammar Lesson Squirrely Grammar On the front of one card, I found a picture of a squirrel holding an oversized acorn under each arm. The title:   A Squirrel Birthday Poem.   The first three lines of the poem: Happy Birthday to you, You can bet your sweet butt To insure you a great birthday I opened the card to find the last two lines of the poem: I’d give my left nut. I laughed.   And I also got inspired to write about the difference between â€Å"ensure† and â€Å"insure.†Ã‚   My first reaction was that â€Å"insure† had been used incorrectly here and that the correct verb was â€Å"ensure.†Ã‚   As I did my research, I learned that I was only partially right about that assessment. The Essay Expert Gets a Grammar Lesson:   Assure, Insure, Ensure Associated Press style does indeed dictate that â€Å"ensure† means to make sure something happens and that â€Å"insure† means to issue a life insurance policy.   Other authorities, however, state that it is acceptable to use the two interchangeably, though â€Å"insure† does more often relate to monetary insurance and â€Å"ensure† more often relates to a non-monetary guarantee. About.com has a great article about these distinctions, and covers the word â€Å"assure† as well.   See Assure, Ensure, and Insure:   Commonly Confused Words by Richard Nordquist. I’m not going to go into detail about the difference between all these words.   I do want to point out that regardless of his or her proper word choice, the greeting card writer took artistic license in omitting the verb in the sentence.   A correct sentence would have read, â€Å"To insure that you have a great birthday†¦.†Ã‚   The way it read, â€Å"To insure you a great birthday† doesn’t make sense.   We can insure a car or a house, or insure *that* something happens, but we can’t ensure a person something. And Now for the Valentines Day Life Lesson Nevertheless, I am more interested in the fact that I was so sure the word choice in the card was incorrect that I almost wrote a blog article about the difference between insure and ensure without doing my research.   What a great lesson in being willing to be wrong! I often think I’m right about a lot of things, not just grammatical issues.   Things like how clean a kitchen should be, or what habits are healthy and not, or what is the best way to do just about anything.   Sometimes being right is not the best way to sustain healthy relationships.   And sometimes I’m just plain wrong.   I can assure you of that. It’s Valentine’s Day.   Is there anything you’re sure you’re right about with your loved ones?   Are you willing to consider the possibility that there’s another right answer out there in the world besides yours? Please share your thoughts on grammar and on being right.   I’d love to hear your comments! Category:Grammar Writing TipsBy Brenda BernsteinFebruary 14, 2011 9 Comments judyb says: February 15, 2011 at 12:06 pm But its just a card!!! Found your website from the Linkedin Blogger Group. Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: February 15, 2011 at 1:08 pm Thanks for your comment Judy. In the world of The Essay Expert, everything is fodder for a grammar lesson and sometimes a life lesson too! Log in to Reply Kerri Randall says: February 16, 2011 at 7:36 pm Found you through LinkedIn, too. =) And yes, its just a card but (and I totally dont mean this in a mean or harsh tone) but it baffles me that on the whole, spelling and grammar just arent important to a vast majority of people, it seems, and even more annoying is the fact that its rude to correct people. Yargh, lol. Thats just me, though. I was a writing major in college and still write often, so I have those stereotypical grammar and spelling pet peeves. =) Log in to Reply Jackie Grande says: February 15, 2011 at 8:14 pm I love the card, but even more so love the lesson learned! Nice article Brenda. Log in to Reply Sherry Zander says: February 16, 2011 at 7:39 pm Hi, Brenda. This bugged me, so I do what I do every time I have a question about a word(s) I looked all three of them up in Websters. Interestingly enough, all three words are synonymous of each other. This boggles my mind, since I was always taught that insure was related to insurance products only. I would never have guessed this changed had you not posted this on your blog. Log in to Reply Mari-Lyn says: February 16, 2011 at 10:23 pm Wheres the flash cards? Its cute that you used a greeting card for your post. Thanks for the lesson of grammar. Bet you could re-write my comment. Log in to Reply Hajra says: February 17, 2011 at 3:52 pm Hey Brenda, I am visiting after such a long time and boy I had so much fun with this post! This Valentiness I assured myself that I wouldnt feel miserable on being single but that didnt happen. Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: February 17, 2011 at 4:22 pm Welcome back Hajra! Glad you enjoyed. And may Valentines Day be a joy for you in the future no matter your relationship status! Log in to Reply Penelope J. says: February 17, 2011 at 8:20 pm Hi Brenda, Id have had exactly the same reaction as you did to that card. Its sad how we can overlook something funny or enjoyable because of incorrect grammar or punctuation. I also find that many cant distinguish between insure and ensure and misuse of the two words is common in what should be well-written documents and even articles. Id like to subscribe to your blog but the button doesnt work. What should I do? Log in to Reply