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Grammar
Course: Grammar > Unit 10
Lesson 1: Frequently confused words- Affect and effect
- Frequently confused words: affect/effect
- Hear/here and accept/except
- Frequently confused words: here/hear
- There, their, and they're
- Frequently confused words: there/their/they're
- To, two, and too
- Frequently confused words: to/two/too
- Compliment/complement and desert/dessert
- Less versus fewer
- Bare/bear, allowed/aloud, advice/advise, and break/brake
- Frequently confused words: assorted
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Affect and effect
TL;DW: affect's a verb and effect's a noun. But there's a little more to it than that.
Want to join the conversation?
- "Effective immediately"
Noun or verb?(5 votes)- The phrase
effective immediately
answers the question "When?", and thus it is neither a noun phrase, nor a verb phrase, but an adverb phrase.(25 votes)
- It stands for "too long; didn't read" and provides a shorter summary of a longer initial post.(9 votes)
- It's a shortform used on the internet that means "Too long; didn't read." One use for TL;DR is if you were summarizing a lengthy piece of text for the people who would think it was too long and wouldn't read it.(6 votes)
- "who reads a video?" short answer a deaf person(4 votes)
- What the heck does tl;dw mean!
Or i could look it up?(2 votes)- too long; Didn't watch(4 votes)
- Who reads videos?
That is actually a good question🤔(2 votes)- People who sing along to the song videos I make MUST read, because the lyrics are on the screen.(3 votes)
- who was the first person who realized that the earth was planet and discovered that theres was space.(2 votes)
- I agree with David, google or search history(2 votes)
- Are there any words we should not use other than in the video?(1 vote)
- There are LOTS of words we shouldn't use, but that doesn't stop people from using them on Twitter.(4 votes)
- What about this: "effective immediately" . What is effect here?(1 vote)
- In that sentence, the word “effective” is an adjective.
If you scroll a bit further down in the questions section, you can find some answers to a similar question, too.
I hope this helps!(3 votes)
- What about this: "effective immediately" . What is effect here?(2 votes)
- The word here is "effective", not "effect". It is an adjective.(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [David] Hello grammarians,
today we're going to talk about two of my, well, I
don't know if I'd call them favorite, but two of my most
frequently confused words. I make this mistake all the time and I think it's important
to keep it straight. Affect and effect are
two very different words. What is the difference you might ask. Well, that's why I'm here. To sum it up, let's just put the TL, DR right at the top. Affect is a verb, just
think of that as a verb. And effect, think of that as a noun. It's more complicated
than that, obviously, but most of the time, when
you're looking at these two words and you're trying to decide, oh which one do I use? Affect is a verb, effect is a noun. That's the too long,
didn't read of this video, and who reads a video, but
this is your key takeaway. Let me give you some examples. Let's take this sentence: the drought had a nasty
blank on Angela's crops. Now, both of these words mean something happened, right? They both mean that there was a change, but effect with an E is
the result of that change, and affect with an A, or affect, is the change agent if that makes sense. So, we're looking at this sentence: the drought had a nasty
blank on Angela's crops. We know we need to use one of those. Well, we're signaling here
by using the article a and the adjective nasty that
we're looking for a noun. So, we'd wanna say: the
drought had a nasty effect. Another way to think of
this is effect with an E is the same way as saying result. Similarly, if we wanted to
write this sentence again, but with affect, with a verb, we'd say: the drought affected Angela's crops. So, affect, we're using it as a verb, effect we're using it as a noun. And I'm exaggerating the
pronunciation of those just to give you the distinction. Now, of course there are
always obnoxious exceptions, let's cover them briefly,
but just bear in mind that these are pretty rare. Number one: the word
effect with an E as verb. When you see this as a verb
it usually means to create. The way I usually see this is
in the phrase effect change, which really means to bring about change. Effect here means to create. So, Kimiko hoped that the
new mayor would effect change in her town. What we're saying here
is really, make change. When we say effect as a verb
that really just means to make. And the other obnoxious exception is affect as a noun, which is like a psychology term, it really means someone's personality. So, for example Percy had a smug affect. And that just means his
personality is smug. Now, I wanna hit again
that these are exceptions and they're pretty rare. I would caution avoiding
them most of the time. I think your big takeaway
is that affect is a verb and effect is a noun, and
yes these exceptions exist but I think in the interest
of clarity, you need to be very certain when you're using them. Because affect here as a
noun is professional jargon, frankly, this is psychologist talk and that means it's a very
particular kind of English, it's to be used in a specific context. Likewise, effect as a verb, frankly, I don't what you get out of this. I would just say make, frankly, I'm not sure it's worth the confusion. But that's just a style
tip, obviously it's still grammatical to use it that way, you just have to be careful of confusion. So, what's the takeaway? Affect is a verb, effect is a noun, but there are exceptions. You can learn anything. David out.