A couple years ago, I participated in the much-touted and much-maligned National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This annual event happens in November and is designed to inspire writers (and regular people) who struggle with procrastination, fear, distraction and time management in their quests to craft the next great American novel. I was a “winner” my first time out, meaning I completed the NaNoWriMo quest of cranking out 50,000 words in one month. Go me! 

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Welcome once again to Language Ninja’s Q & A, where the Ninj answers burning grammatical and common usage questions. This week, we bring you a Holiday Grab-Bag of grammatical gaffes. Let’s get started!

Q: What is the difference between the terms ensure and insure? Don’t they essentially mean the same thing?

A: Eh… sort of. Not really.

Basically, the verb to ensure means to make sure/certain of. The verb to insure, on the other hand, means to provide protection against some kind of difficulty. These two definitions may seem kind of similar, but when you consider that insure is used only within the context of easing a financial or personal burden, while ensure carries no such specific good/bad implication, the distinction becomes clearer. By oiling the springs on her homemade spike traps, Gladys ensures the projectiles will easily pierce through the hearts of her victims. 

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I just left the DMV in midtown Manhattan. Let’s place my current emotional state somewhere in the sixth circle of Hell (Heresy), smack dab between Anger and Violence.

In truth, it wasn’t as dreadful as you might imagine. With facilitators armed with tablets to constantly update customers on their expected wait times and plenty of city bureaucrats to process paperwork, I was in and out in around 45 minutes. But during my time there, I must have signed my name 15 times, each scrawl looking a little less legible and feeling less like a stamp of authenticity and more like an excessive burden with little meaning in a digital world.

So I ask: is the signature dead? What relevance does your John Hancock have in today’s wired society? 

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Question: Ninja, tell me truly. Is grammar important, really?

Answer: Yes, of course! With a caveat.

See, grammar exists as a structure for the efficient communication of ideas. When we uniformly accept the common standards for a particular language, we are able to say what we mean and mean what we say. However, humans made the rules, and humans can gosh-darned well break them, too. Screw you, academia!

Language is Fluid

Language is fluid; usages change and we may even begin to use basic terms in radically different ways. The word hack may seem innocuous enough, but there are no less than seven common definitions for this one little term, and we aren’t even counting the archaic falconry and cheese-making associations (“I’m still hacking[1] up my lungs from when I had to hack[2] my way out of my burning apartment with a Rachel Ray kitchen knife, after that hack[3] who hacked[4] into my life-hack[5] website dropped a lit joint on my shag carpet, then called a hack[6] and fled because he couldn’t hack[7] it”). 

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Everywhere you look, advice on SEO marketing and increasing site traffic are all “blah blah blah” about the all-powerful content. How to improve your content. How to create engaging content. How what you thought was good content at one time is now no longer acceptable because of reasons. (And, on a related note, how to spiff up existing content.)

At the frontline of content creation stands blogging. Blogs started out as the business equivalent of a “Dear Readers,” but let’s be honest: most blog posts these days have almost nothing to do with actual writing anymore. They’re all about cross-marketing and the multimedia experience, or how many images to include and at what resolution and which designer can hook you up with a really swell infographic.

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The Language Ninja is back, happily answering grammar-related questions that she has mostly not invented.

1. Question: Is there a significant difference between the phrases: “I could care less” and “I couldn’t care less?”

Answer: Although, lamentably, these two phrases are used interchangeably, yes — there is actually a huge difference. You see, I couldn’t care less means — literally — that the person uttering the phrase is physically, mentally and spiritually devoid of concern regarding the topic to which he or she is referring. If you couldn’t care about something to any lesser degree, then you are totally absent care. However, if you could care less, then you actually do care — albeit just a smidge. Whether the person using the expression realizes it or not, he or she is really communicating the opposite of what is intended: that there is an element of care left within his or her soul.

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When the online realm is your workspace, you’re always chasing after some idea of “cool.” The constantly shifting Internet landscape means fads, ideas, slang, and even Fortune 500 companies flash hot for a brief moment and then burn out just as quickly.

As professional writers making the online realm our office space, we think a lot about what defines cool. But we also think a lot about words themselves — their definitions, what makes one more

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