The Language Perfectionist: Use These Words Effectively

by Don Hauptman (07/19/2008)

In a major business publication, I found this sentence: "Is the slowing economy effecting how businesses conduct marketing?"

Using the verb effect for affect is surely one of the most common of all linguistic errors. And it gets even trickier, because the words have various meanings as nouns as well as verbs.

Let’s try to sort this out:

  • The verb affect means to influence or change. "Jim wondered if reading a review would affect his judgment of the book."
  • The verb effect means to cause, bring about, or execute. "The manager was certain that his plan would effect a solution." Or "The treatment effected a cure."
  • The noun effect means result. "Martha’s speech had a powerful effect on the audience."
  • The noun affect is rarely used outside of psychology and psychiatry. It means a feeling or emotion. The emphasis is on the first syllable.

As if all that isn’t enough, another sense of affect as a verb is to pretend or show off. "Charlotte affects a French accent, but she was born and raised in Kansas." The faux accent would be criticized as an affectation.

The distinctions above may be a bit complicated, but understanding them will affect your language skills positively, and the effect will be an improvement in your communication skills.

[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book forthcoming from AWAI, that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into critiquing, consulting, training, and speaking.]

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