When affect and effect aren’t verbs and nouns… exceptions

She was really affected after reading the title of this entry, but I’m sure you weren’t surprised to hear there are exceptions to the rules about how to use affect and effect.  Let’s take a look at them below.

Affect and Effect Exceptions

Now that you’ve mastered the basic difference—effect as a noun and affect as a verb—it’s time to shake things up. In some contexts, effect is a verb and affect is a noun. Thanks a lot, English.

Effect as a Verb

Effect as a verb means to bring about. It usually shows up with nouns like “change” or “solutions.”

The protesters wanted to effect change in the corrupt government.

In other words, they wanted to bring about the effect of change—maybe by getting the government to change its policies or even step down.

If you use affect here, it would mean “to have an effect on change” or “to impact change.” Protesters who want to “affect change” would be trying to impact existing changes. That’s nice, but not as powerful as creating change, especially when there’s a corrupt government on the line.

It doesn’t have to be quite so revolutionary, either. This one is about social media:

What once seemed like a trivial way to keep in touch with friends, sharing photos and jokes, has become a force for societal change, […] empowering citizens of the world to unite and effect change in a number of ways.
—The Huffington Post, “Social Media as a Formidable Force for Change”

If this discussion about social media had to do with citizens trying to “affect change,” that would probably mean that they’re trying to speed up, slow down, or totally stop all forms of change that have to do with social media. Ironically, it might be easier to effect change with a really powerful Facebook movement than to affect the changes that are happening to society because of the widespread use of social media. Funny how that works, right?

Affect as a Noun

Affect as a noun means feeling, emotion, or specific emotional response.

The patient had a flat affect throughout the therapy session.

Sounds like the patient was in kind of a blah mood. Not too complicated (except maybe for the patient).

Affected as an Adjective

And we could do nothing to help them; Dunham was crying quietly beside me, and all the men were affected by the piteous cries.
(John Keegan, The First World War)

Note that in that last example, the men are “affected” because they are changed by the disturbing events of war, but that this change has an emotional factor, too. When a person is affected by an event, that often means that the effect is mainly on the level of emotion or psychology.

Well, this one comes out of left field. But affected can indeed be used as an adjective to mean pretentious, artificial, or designed to impress. It usually isn’t a compliment, and means that someone is acting stuck-up or trying to look like they’re more important than they actually are.

Note that when someone acts affected, it looks very different from when people are affected by something on an emotional level, like the soldiers above.

Additional Information

What makes these two little words extra tricky is that they sound pretty much identical. Yes, that’s the homophone thing we mentioned in the post on affect and effect’s primary usage. For the most part, people will pronounce affect and effect almost exactly the same. But, every once in awhile, they won’t.

If you listen closely, in some cases you’ll be able to hear a slight difference in the first syllable of the two different words. So, “effect” has a slightly stronger “eh” sound, like in “red,” while affect is pronounced a bit more lazily, as “uh-ffect.” But don’t count on those slight differences to tell one word from the other. Only a very careful enunciator will make the distinction at all, and it’s a very subtle distinction, anyway.

On top of pronunciation, there are a few other phrases and unusual uses of these two words that deserve a glance. Here goes:

• There’s a whole scholarly field called affect studies, which studies affect—the emotional kind. You can even read all about how emotion is a big, academic deal in The Affect Theory Reader.
• Personal effects is an idiom: in this case, effects essentially means belongings. Chances are, your belongings have had some effect on your wallet, closet space, or personal life. Hence, personal effects.
• Effective means successful in bringing about a desired result.
• Affective means producing affect, in the emotional sense. If The Affect Theory Reader affects how you feel about affect, that would make it an affective book.

 

Test your understanding of affect and effect with a short and fun quiz.

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