Affect and effect | Frequently confused words | Usage | Grammar

Hello Garian, 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, you know, and I think it's important to keep it straight. So, affect and effect are two very different words.

What is the difference, you might ask? Well, uh, that's why I'm here. So, to sum it up, let's just put the TLD: drr right at the top. Uh, affect is a verb; just think of that as a verb. An 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, "Ah, which one do I use?" Um, affect is a verb, effect is a noun. That's the too long, didn't read of this video. And who reads the video? But this is your key takeaway.

Let me give you some examples. So, okay, 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. Um, but effect with an "e" is the result of that change, and affect with an "a" or effect, uh, is the changing, 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 you know this adjective "nasty" that we're looking for a noun, so we'd want to say "the drought had a nasty effect." Another way to say, 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 as 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. Okay, so number one: the word effect with an "e" as a verb. When you see this as a verb, um, it usually means to create. So 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, Kimo 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.

Um, and the other obnoxious exception is affect as a noun. 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.