On the new Engineering SE, we field questions about professional engineering registration. The tag categorizing these questions is "licensure" and I usually find myself referring to the topic by that word but there are times when I feel like I should use "licensing" instead. I feel like the two words carry slightly different implications but I have trouble identifying the specific way in which they are different.
For example, I much prefer "licensure" here:
This question concerns professional licensure.
but it does not work here:
The Board for Professional Engineers is a licensing body.
and either seems to work here:
The organization deals with professional licensing issues.
The organization deals with issues of professional licensure.
Are these words synonyms? They don't seem to be equivalent in every formulation; how can I decide which is more appropriate for a given sentence?
I don't think this is directly related to the license/licence distinction.
Best Answer
In each of your examples licensing is used as an adjective, while licensure is used as a noun.
Licensure:
The suffix -ure creates an abstract active noun:
Licensing is the progressive form of license, used as a verb, noun or an adjective, depending on the context: