Ed’s blog

February 10, 2006

Affect and Effect (or you can effectively affect, but you can’t affectively effect)

Filed under: Uncategorized — simnett @ 11:38 pm

I used to be of the view that what was important in English is to get the point across. But that risks creating a sloppiness which means that people just get things wrong. An example from a blog today-
“How do I affect change” does not mean the same as “how do I effect change”. The two would be paraphrased completely differently, but high IQ people either don’t know that, or are willing to let their readers work it out.

My paraphases-
How do I have an impact on the change that is happening, vs
How do I make a change

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