7th May, 2008

Help Me Understand Affect VS. Effect

I am (slowly) reading through The Spirit and the Church, and I am seeing the word “affect” used quite frequently.  It is throwing me off guard because I don’t recall having seen the “affect” used in quite a while.  I see “effect” used often.

I haven’t yet sat down to hammer out the details between the two, but I would like to know the difference, and properly be able to use the two words.  So, if you have any really great ways to remember the difference, please let me know.

Posted by: Josh Pratt
Categories:
Words

Responses

I don’t know if you have figured this out yet…if you have ignore the rest of this comment.

As far as I know, affect is a verb and effect is a noun.

Onions affect our eyes. The effect is crying.

He’s been affected by sin. You can tell by the effects of stealing and falsehood.

I hope this helps.

PS - Owen is very hard to read isn’t he!?

By: philthecarl on May 7th, 2008
at 9:26 pm

THANK you, Prattski! You can imagine how common confusion of affect/effect annoys me. :) Philthecarl has it down; affect is a verb–something you do–while effect is a noun–something you experience! A in affect=a for action (at least that’s what I tell the 8th graders which helps me remember the difference). :)

By the way, I loved hearing about the ESV literary study Bible… didn’t even know that existed. Have you read about the one coming out in October? It looks like it has some sweet commentary, maps, and pictures!

By: Scott & Allison on May 8th, 2008
at 2:44 pm

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