Affect vs. effect – with visual aids
As Grammar Girl fights the good fight, I’d thought I’d join in with some handy visual aids.
‘affect’ vs. ‘effect’, what’s the difference?
Never again have to cross your fingers as you hit send/print/launch – not really knowing whether you’ve used ‘affect’ or ‘effect’ correctly.
General rule?
- affect is the verb
- effect is the noun
But! English being English (that is, requiring of the most tedious classes in all of high school) – there are sneaky exceptions.
Check out KU’s handy printable sheet here – and commit to memory my noble contribution.
Boo hiss, Universal
I went to see Couples [sic] Retreat this weekend. A research project.
I’d hoped to see 4 couples (gorgeous girls curiously married to guys way out of their league) fleeing backwards for 2 hours. Nonstop withdrawal from Place A to Place B. It mattered to me dearly. I needed them to run for their lives in hasty, panicked, flat-out retreat.
$12.95 wasted, nobody did any such thing.
Instead, the characters went on a retreat. Took a couples’ retreat.
And while the packed theatre suffered their long-winded antics and mediocre slapstick – we mutually hated this film for one reason above all others.
Where was the goddamned apostrophe?
Retreat. Noun. Requiring of an apostrophe when someone takes one. When they take possession of it. (REMEMBER THIRD GRADE?)
How did yet another movie poster depart on a print run of hundreds of thousands of copies without anyone noticing?
Agreed – this movie caters to the “Morons, Illiterates and Meatheads” demographic — but smart people get bored on a rainy Vancouver night, too!
Lynne Truss, come back from Africa now, the Western world needs you!
My good opinion once lost is lost forever. You?
I get concerned whenever Dan Brown pops up again – back for more money? – and then get angry. Never in this century have lucrative writing and digestible English been prised so far apart. (Last century? I pick John Gray.) Yuck.
Agree? Good.
Disagree? See how you can stomach the Telegraph’s pick of “Dan Brown’s 20 worst sentences”.
My favourite –
Only those with a keen eye would notice his 14-karat gold bishop’s ring with purple amethyst, large diamonds, and hand-tooled mitre-crozier appliqué.
Dan, put the pen down, take your millions – and shuffle off!
Sorry – I’ll ask in a way you’ll understand:
Shuffle off…radiating a fiery clarity that forecast[s] [your] reputation for unblinking [suckiness] in all matters.
Boooo.
Upper lower case god god damned
So it came to pass. A web visitor found my site last month, after typing the above into Google.
Was it a statement or a question? Either way, he seemed mad as hell.
The internet & capitalisation
I’d already planned to feature some interesting inventions regarding online capitalisation – improper nouns parading where they shouldn’t in posher black tie. They’re everywhere.
In the world of vacation rentals, ‘Villa’ is capitalised 8 times out of 10 – no matter where in the sentence it falls. Why? WHYEEE!?!?
- Because it’s expensive?
- Because so few words start with ‘v’?
- Because once, a very long time ago, we stole the word from another language?
Why? The same writer would never start ‘house’ or ‘home’ or ‘building’ with a big letter – why villa?
It leaves me with little to say… but god god damned.
What do you see in your interwebby world?
Perhaps, in your line of work, you encounter a different beast – dressed improperly.
What is it? Who needs a good whack with the grammar stick? Let me know.
Is this you? Change your evil ways.
Get your big letters and little letters straight: The Economist’s Capitalisation Style Guide
Friends don’t let friends – do any of the below.
Available in Google Labs is a drunk email inhibitor, Mail Goggles, – requiring you to complete math questions before an email will send (during the hours you might have one hand around a bottle and one on your mouse). Clever.
Breathalyzers are fine, but, as a society, we’re in much more trouble than that.
I’d love to see the invention of a basic literacy test before a keyboard will work.
The prototype my brother created:
Thank you Sammy
This needs immediate NASA funding. Otherwise? Our language will be slowly hacked to pieces, sold to the lowest bidder.
A deodorant commercial heard yesterday:
“Leaves less white marks!”
NO! Who put you in charge?
Learn more at Grammar Girl – OR – give up entirely. Million dollar ad campaigns get away with abominable sloppiness – and so can you. Instead, grab a drink and (try to) email someone who doesn’t love you anymore.
Bryson on brochures that suck
Flickr: way opening
Are you in the habit of researching good vs. bad brochures? There’s dangerous room for error. The tacky pamphlet is out and, according to Bill Bryson’s words of 14 years ago – it’s been out.
“[I] eventually ended up at the tourist office, feeling mildly lost and far from home. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing here. I looked through rack of leaflets for shire horse centres, petting zoos, falconry centres, miniature pony centres, model railways, butterfly farms, and something called – I jest not, I regret to say – Twiggy Winkie’s Farm and Hedgehog Hospital, none of which seemed to address my leisure requirements.
Nearly all the leaflets were depressingly illiterate, particularly with regard to punctuation – I sometimes think that if I see one more tourist leaflet that says “Englands Best” or “Britains Largest,” I will go and torch the place – and they all seemed so pathetically modest in what they had to offer.
Nearly all of them padded out their lists of featured attractions with things like “Free Car Park,” “Gift Shop and Tearoom,” and the inevitable “Adventure Playground” (and then were witless enough to show you in the photograph that it was just a climbing frame and a couple of plastic animals on springs). Who goes to these places? I couldn’t say, I’m sure”.
Bill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island, Doubleday 1995
We’re all going on a summer holiday? No thanks.
Read a few sleuthing tips on how to unearth your better brochure.
(And don’t forget to send me your illiterate bingo victories as they occur).
Illiterate Bingo – Friday Business Board Games
We live in trying times. Though many among us live in trying time’s.
Last week, Matthew was kind enough to point out the BBC’s 50 worst clichés, a website which features this brilliant tool.
If you don’t work in a corporate office environment but still want to play, hang around an airport lounge, a hotel lobby or a downtown Starbucks. They’ll find you.
Business jargon is like a bad infomercial: so bad it’s good. Our much graver concern, the real axis of evil, is awful, lazy English:
- apostrophe crimes
- lobotomised word choice
- hyphenation abominations
Where my Tapestries of Travesties do all they can to name and shame, I urge you to take to your trenches with a little coping mechanism.
Illiterate Bingo
Keep this sucker on your desktop and, when you score bingo, send back screenshots of your victories (or what little solace we can find in such butchery).
You can fill in the middle slot with the slice of bad language that makes you bleed the most. I’ve already found mine and it’s a bloody zinger. We’re talking triple-threat stuff.
A few rules?
- No picking on non-native English speakers. 99 times out of 100 it’s the native speakers doing the visible damage – those who painstakingly learn English grammar would never dash their hard work with such carelessness.
- No trifling typos. While – knock on wood – I’ve never published a typo that I know of, we’re all mortals and make no promises otherwise. It’s the sloppy folks ruining the internet that I’m after. They’re habitual felons and I implore you to make citizens’ arrests as and when their sorry trail of destruction appears.
Nervous?
Are people going to score points on your blog or website?
Seek help now. 12-step programme: stop killing the apostrophe.
Go forth and take back what we hold sacred!
12-step programme: stop killing the apostrophe
Look carefully. Here we have two innocent little babies, curled helplessly in foetal position. Handle them carefully, or you might drop them. You’ll hurt them if you do. You’ll lose credibility, no one will trust you again – and the clean up’s messy. So we’ll avoid killing the apostrophe, yes?
Here’s the path to recovery, in 12 easy steps.
1. Admit you have a problem – It’s ok, you’re in the safety of your anonymous interwebbed life. I won’t know. Just admit to yourself, out loud:
My name is X and I don’t know how to use an apostrophe. I force them into plural words where they don’t want to go. Yes, that’s me, I commit these crimes because I don’t know any better. I want help.
2. Realise you need help from others – Yes, yes you do! Find it here, here, here, there, over here, try this and how about this.
3. For the greater good of mankind, decide to take action – It will not only restore your sanity – but mine too. Oh thank heaven.
4. Assess the impact your apostrophe crimes have had – Lost credibility, rolled eyes, dejected sighs from potential customers as they click elsewhere and run for dear life.
5. You accept responsibility – For these past mistakes you have no one to blame but yourself (and perhaps lousy English teachers and too much TV).
6. You focus on the future – The properly punctuated future and look forward to the positive changes you can make.
7. You actively commit to making whatever changes are necessary – Hurray! You’ll need some help and (surprise!) I’m only too happy to provide it. Print this little chart and tape it to your monitor. Hum the rules softly in your sleep.
8. You make amends – For past crimes you will shoulder the burden of teaching others that “other’s” is not how to make the word plural. You will call others on their mistakes and only settle for what is right.
9. Forgive those who wronged you – However you came by this awful addiction to dead wrong apostrophe usage, you forgive your teachers for their miserable shortcomings.
10. Reflect on the past – Consider the sentences wasted and sentiment lost, your kingdom for a retarding force.
11. No excuses – You must remain vigilant to the creeping habit of apostrophe butchering. Keep your handy reference chart with you no matter what.
12. Inner peace – It’s yours for the simple commitment to using our apostrophe baby right.
And now, let us take a moment to remember those apostrophes used in ignorance in just the last week alone. Please take some time to reflect upon my Tapestry of Travesty. May their deaths not be in vain.
Plenty more where this came from – subscribe to my feed now!
Related post: So verb’s need apostrophe’s too?
Screw you, College Board
In the U.S. school system, high school kids rely on strong SAT scores for university acceptance. Until recently, this meant 800 points for math and 800 for verbal skills.
It was a strange system. A student could receive top marks in one category, fail the other and the lopsided genius would end up at the local community college.
It all makes sense now. They were trying to tell us, “You need both math and verbal skills to survive in the real world!” Wonky brains won’t work if you need to switch sides and tip the pizza boy or write a birthday card. So, College Board, I finally concede that I do need mathematics to finesse daily life.
But my math skills only take me so far (usually to the door, with the pizza). We creative types know to hire an accountant or financial help when needs soar beyond our algebraic reach. The converse does not seem to hold true for the math-brained world.
My exhibits A, B and C
This email
The 2 HSBC bank managers (two!) who asked me how to spell Shanghai.
“What does HSBC stand for?!?” I asked, incredulous.
“Why, the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank!” They answered by rote.
“Uh huh….”.
*Blank stare*
“S-H-A-N-G….”
And OnlineMarketer, who will only trust his money to a bank that can handle high school English.
Final score: math geeks 0, cool kids 3
College Board, could you please do some follow up? It seems your left-brained champions need a refresher in their verbal aptitude.
Yea, yea, yea… in 2005 you added a writing section. Too little, too late! Your negligence means there are generations of untested, unashamed illiterates out there.
I think the math crew needs to retire their spell check and give one of us a call.
Related post:
12-step programme: stop killing the apostrophe