The ngram viewer is a great way to figure out what phrases people commonly use. &quot;Make sure&quot; vs. &quot;ensure&quot; is a good example, I guess. I would have though &quot;make sure&quot; is more common, but apparently not: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;ngrams&#x2F;graph?content=make+sure%2Censure&amp;case_insensitive=on&amp;year_start=1970&amp;year_end=2000&amp;corpus=15&amp;smoothing=3&amp;share=&amp;direct_url=t4%3B%2Cmake%20sure%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bmake%20sure%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BMake%20sure%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Censure%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bensure%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BEnsure%3B%2Cc0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;ngrams&#x2F;graph?content=make+sure%2Cen...</a>