Grammar Nerd Wednesday: That sound effect affects my sound.

This is part of an ongoing series of posts designed to make everyone think I'm a colossal prick because of my grammatical specificity. These posts are either me lecturing the masses about how to properly use grammar/punctuation/the rules of the English language, or me figuring out for myself, textually, the aforementioned.  They will run every Wednesday.  If you run afoul of these rules, rest assured, even though I judge you for your poor grammar, I'm still a lesser being than you.

Affect and effect – why do we do this to ourselves, English speaking people?  I’m serious.  Why do we make words that look similar and sound the same?  Why don’t we just call one “affect” and the other one “turdsmack?”  It’s like read – meaning “I like to read!” and read, meaning “I used to like to read until someone dripped searing hot transmission fluid in my eyes!”  One should be “read” and the other should be “lookyknow.”

So, what’s the difference between affect and effect?  And, if they sound pretty much exactly alike, and you don’t go out of your way to make them sound different (because you’re not some dickheaded Graduate Assistant teaching a British Literature recitation, who makes a point to say Aaaaa-fect and eeeee-fect,) instead just pronouncing both as “uh-fect,” whodafuckcares?!  Well, at some point in your rotten life, you’ll have to sit down at a computer and mash the keys on your keyboard to hopefully convey to others some type of meaning or intent in your missive, and when you get into the affect/effect conundrum, you don’t want to look like Ray Babbitt when Charlie turns on the warm water to take a bath in the high roller’s suite in Caesar’s Palace.

In that instance, Ray was worried about the possible outcomes, or the E-ffect.  That worry A-ffected his behavior, meaning it influenced his behavior, and he started shouting “HOT WATER BURN BABY!” Remembering his parents dire warnings that he should never try to put little Charlie in the bathtub when the water was hot.

The nitty-gritty of the grammatical difference between “affect” and “effect” are that they are different parts of speech.  “Affect” is a verb, meaning an action word.  I affect you, meaning I influence you, when I say “Come on, just a few puffs.  All your friends are doing it!”  “Effect” is a noun, meaning a person/place/thing/idea.  Effect is the result or outcome.  The outcome of my influencing you to smoke pot laced with PCP, which you didn’t know at the time is that you FREAK THE FUCK OUT!  That’s the effect.

The title of this entry is “That sound effect affects my sound.”  My wife and I have a stereo receiver that we run our television’s sound through.  It cuts down on distortion for movies like “Star Wars” or “Apocalypse Now!,” especially the battle and explosion scenes, which normally sound like they are coming through my iPhone speaker.  Phrased another way, the title could say, “The result of that explosion sound causes my television speakers to overload and distort the audio.”  Sound effects are results, outcomes, things.  Those sounds have an affect, or influence on the way the speakers on the TV operate.

This one is pretty cut and dry.  The easiest way to remember it is “is it a thing, or an action.”  “That affected me” is a past-tense action.  “That effect was impressive” is a noun.  Nouns have no tense.  Here’s a quick and simple rule that works for all the times you’ll need it with affect/effect: “If you need a verb other than affect/effect, it’s effect.”  Affect is your verb.  “I affect you” is Me action wording you.  If you’re talking about the e-ffect, you’d need a verb, because e-ffect is a noun.  “That effect impressive” sounds like an unfrozen caveman would say it.

Ready for me to kind of screw it up for you? Effect has a second meaning.  What’s worse?  It’s a verb.  Just like affect.  “Effect” the verb means to implement changes.  That sounds an awful lot like having an influence.  It kind of is.  Fucking English.  Let’s all just learn Esperanto.

The difference is, “Effect,” the verb, means to implement something new.  “Affect” means to influence something already existing.  When you hear someone say “Hitler effected change in Germany,” they are saying he implemented a brand new form of National Socialism, or Nazism, because the change was something brand new.  If they say “Hitler affected Germany” it means he had an influence on Germany, because Germany already existed.  “Hitler affected change in Germany” is not correct.

The rule here is, “effect” the verb almost always goes with change.

One could say “When someone effects a new form of government, it affects everyone in that country.”  That means “when someone brings about a new form of government, it influences everyone in that country.”

One could even say “When I effect a change in the way I cook crystal meth, the way it affects my customers was an unintended side effect.”  That’s all three!  That’s “effect” the verb, saying “I introduced a new way of cooking crystal meth,” “affect” meaning “it influenced my customers,” and can be identified by “effect” the noun, as “an outcome.”

The only way this all goes to pot is if you use “effects” as a noun, meaning your accouterments.  Don’t do that.  It’s grammatically correct, but it just means you’ve seen “Pirates of the Caribbean” eighteen times, and YES, we all fucking know the line “Now, bring me that horizon” was ad-libbed, but it also means you probably wear a light scarf in the summer because you LOOOOVE Johnny Depp and he wears them too! If that’s the case, then you’ll be affected by the effect of my rage at your effects, because I will punch you in your be-scarfed neck.