This
page is to help Fourth Year Research Project students in the CSSE
School with a finer point of grammar which may be relevant to their
theses.
There
are other grammar topics dealt with here.
Affect
vs Effect
Examples
of incorrect use
B1)
Network traffic effected the response time.
B2)
The affect of increasing font size is shown.
Examples
of correct use
G1)
Network traffic affected the response time.
G2)
The
effect of increasing font size is shown.
General
information
Both
"affect" and "effect" are both nouns and verbs.
However, the most common usages, especially in computing, are with
"affect" as a verb as in G1 and "effect" as a noun as in G2 above.
Beware of using them the other way around as in B1 and B2: they have
very different meanings.
B1 and B2 are actually grammatical sentences but the meanings are as
follows.
B1 means something like this. The response time was helped to be
brought about or caused by network traffic; if there was no network
traffic
then there would be no response time, there may be no response at all!
G1 means that the response time
was influenced by network traffic; perhaps it was slower.
I have adapted the following example from the New Fowler's
"Modern English Usage" (Oxford, 1998). Compare the two sentences.
A single glass of brandy may effect his recovery. A single glass of
brandy may affect his recovery.
The first means that the brandy will bring about his recovery. The
second means that it will have some influence, perhaps deterimental,
on his recovery.
B2 claims that the emotional state corresponding to increased font size
is pictured (as if!). G2, instead, says there
is a diagram indicating how the situation changes as we increase font
size.
See the links below for more details.
Some
links to relevant sources
There is
a good exercise at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_spelprob.html
See
also http://www.ku.edu/~edit/affect.html
If you have any comments on this page you may try to contact
Mark Reynolds.
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