Affect/Effect

So one of my major grammar problems wasn’t one that the book talked about, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who messes it up. Affect vs. effect. I ALWAYS have problems with it! Who/whom and that/which are also words that I have a hard time using, but it seems like I can get around using them if I’m really having problems. But affect and effect have always bugged me! However, I noticed that the AP stylebook has an entry on affect/effect, and it really helped me understand better. Affect is almost always used as a verb, and Affect as a noun should be Avoided. Affect as a verb means to influence. Effect as a noun means result, and effect as a verb means to cause. I tried to think of some memory tricks to help me remember the differences, but I couldn’t come up with any. (If you guys can think of any I’d love to hear them!) But now that I know the stylebook has them in it, I’m going to keep it handy while I write. I figure eventually I’ll do it enough that I’ll be able to remember the difference without help!

So the editing mistake that I noticed the week was actually in a TV show. It was a murder mystery show called Castle. In it, the victim had phrases written all over her face in marker. One of them said “Your finished.” I think it’s obvious what the problem here is. “Your” should be “You’re” since the word the murderer was going for was the contraction of “you are”, and not the possessive form of “you.”