Affect/Effect always gets me. I think its made worse because, when people try to explain the difference, they always reduce it to "when you affect ... you have an effect." In reality the two words actually amount to five distinct words, which adds to the confusion when you encounter the word used in a way that doesn't fit the simple explanation you've been given.
I'm pretty sure I used them properly in the head, basically, but I'm not 100% sure. Its one of the reasons I'm regarded as one of the copy-editor friendliest editors on our staff. I love our copy editors. Protect me from myself, please; make me look good. They really are life savers. It might take me twice as long to write if I had to check every little detail myself.
You know something funny, I've gotten to this point and had to check the spelling of "effect" because it didn't even look like a word anymore.
Compromise. Because I pronounce it wrong, I spell it wrong. I essentially say it "comprimise" or "compremise." Which leads me to adding an "i" as in the first spelling.
- I believe I don't have the war with this one (dashes) that other writers do. I try to use them sparingly. Still, I know I go through phases where I overuse them in place of commas. But I believe all writers, at some point, dash to their ultimate death.
I pretty much have the a/effect thing down, when I think about it, at work. I find the hardest is when we get in a groove (since most affects are verbs) and we hit the effect that is a verb and we really want to change it. Really the English language is horrible. I still stick to the "affect is a verb, effect is a noun" principle, since it works in most cases that we face day to day (unless you work in APA alot, in which you just remember the other meaning of affect too).
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't have nearly as much trouble with spelling, I know I've been tried--and found guilty--of abusing dashes. Though on this point I'd like to note something.
On marks:
- this is a hyphen and is found between words like itty-bitty committee.
-- this is an em-dash (or just dash) and is used to set off thoughts (normally). I know Word often fixes your dashes to be actual dashes, and I know if I started going in on en-dashes I'd lose people..but..I needed to share.
From a purely estetic standpoint, I think you should have said "... and is used to set off thoughts - normally."
ReplyDeleteAlmost every writer - for whatever reason - likes to use dashes, generally as a comma replacement. Don't know why, but every writer seems to succumb, and its always been an issue for copy editors.
I think, looking back at my headline, that I got is exactly wrong. It should be "The affect (v) of this effect (n) is a compromise."