Remember also that nouns are words that take plurals, so you’re often going to see ‘effects’ (more than one effect). So the special ‘effects’ (noun) have some influence, or ‘affect’ (verb) on people. Don’t worry if all that grammar terminology is meaningless have a look at the table below: Subject (noun or noun phrase) This is called subject, verb, object word order and it means that basic sentences have the structure of noun/verb/noun. You would know that in basic English sentences the word order is ‘something does something to something’. This is somewhat laboured and possibly not very intuitive, but it has worked for me all these years.Īnother way is to remember some example sentences, like the title of this post. There are a number of memory devices you can use for this one – the one that seems to have stuck in my head is to use the opposite of the obvious word trick: there is an ‘e’ in verb, so that should go with ‘effect’ but it doesn’t (because they’re opposite), so the verb is affect.

(‘Affect’ as a verb is also used sometimes to mean ‘to put airs on’ – ‘She affected a sophisticated pose with her little finger.’ – Fowler’s says that this usage is of quite different origins to the more usual meaning of ‘to influence’.)Įffect – noun: the thing that causes some change One cold weather effect is a numb nose.

The basic rule is that ‘affect’ is a verb, and ‘effect’ is a noun (except for some less common usage, which is described later).Īffect – verb: to influence Cold weather affects me. Many people have trouble remembering when to use ‘affect’ and when to use ‘effect’.

Will this affect me