Echoes in Eternity

"I hope to have an affect on readers by effecting their grammar."

Hopefully, by the end of this post, you will understand the errors in that sentence.

Affect and effect are two of the trickiest words in the English language; partly because of their similar-sounding pronunciation, and partly due to the fact that they each mean more than one thing. Aff-ECT means "have an influence on," OR it means to put on an unnatural air (like a fake accent). AFF-ect, on the other hand, is used to refer to the emotions exhibited by people ("her affect was melancholy"). So a singer could affect the audience by including a bluesy affect to her vocals.

If you're not confused yet, we still have to deal with effect, which has two meanings and is routinely misspelled or confused with affect. The more common use of the word effect is as a noun ("This brown bean dish could have an effect on me later"), but it can also be used as a verb meaning "to create" ("I would like to effect a change in my eating habits"). Obviously, it can be quite confusing discerning between affect and effect. A general rule of thumb is to use effect when it's a noun (except in reference to emotion) and affect when it's a verb (except when it means "to create").

Thus, if we return to the opening phrase of this post, you will notice that I have switched the two terms and used them both incorrectly.

All of the following sentences are correct:

"I would enjoy effecting a change to your daily routine."
"I would enjoy affecting your daily routine."
"I would enjoy having an effect on your daily routine."