Affect vs. Effect

Wordy Wednesday

I had a request for this Wordy Wednesday topic. It's a tough one, for sure. Very confusing. Let's see if I can help simplify it.

Basically, affect with an A is a verb (action), and effect with an E is a noun (thing).

Affect
Affect means "to influence," as in, "The rain affected my hairdo." Affect can also mean, roughly, "to act in a way you don't really feel," as in, "She affected an air of superiority."

Effect
Effect, to me, basically boils down to mean "a result." You could say, "The rain had no effect on my hairdo."

I always like to think of cause and effect, like from those ISTEP tests back in the day. Remember those? They'd give you a cause, and you were supposed to mark the effect as your answer. Always EFFECT. Never AFFECT. Maybe that only makes sense to me, but I just wanted to throw it out there.

I hope that helps, or at least makes it a little easier to understand.