'Commadore Norrington, my effects please': The difference between affect and effect

The difference between affect and effect has confused more than a few people.  And make no mistake, sometimes even MC Grammar can end up throwing himself on his four-poster bed, howling in frustration at this very tricky area of grammar.

But lucky for us, the difference between affect and effect is a lot simpler than you might think. The thing is, effect and affect are homonyms, which means that even though they sound the same, they have different meanings. Read on, grammar children.

Affect means:

1. To have an influence or cause a change in something

Too much sunlight affected the quality of the photograph

2. To act on the emotions of, to touch, to move.

The arguments and fighting affected me badly

3. To attack or infect

Rabies affects the brain


Effect, on the other hand, means:

1. A result

The drugs took effect immediately


There was more positive information available about immigration, effecting a change attitudes towards immigrants.

2. The power to produce an outcome or achieve a result

The president's threats to kill everyone had no effect on the protesters

3. Something that produces a specific impression, or supports a general design or intention:

The fireworks were the best effects of the concert

If you ever get lost, there's a handy way of remembering the difference. In  the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean', Captain Jack Sparrow has managed to get off from being arrested.  Demanding his stuff back, he says: 'Commodore Norrington, my effects please, and my hat'. When Sparrow asks for his effects he means his sword, his compass, and his belt. These are his effects, meaning the things that make him Captain Jack Sparrow. Your effects are the things that add a little something to the occasion, which is why fireworks are effects, or special animation techniques in a movie are effects.

Everything's not going to be alright

From a fan:

Dear MC Grammar. What's your position on owning and keeping firearms in the home?

Dear fan,

Firstly, thanks for writing. And thanks for asking this important question. What is my position on firearms in the home? Well, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that I am very pro-firearms. I believe that every home should have two or three fully-loaded firearms, and that these should be placed within reaching distance of your bed, or wherever you sleep at night. If you have a habit of going to the bathroom during the night, and your bathroom is not close to where you sleep, such as in the case where you don't have a walk-in wardrobe, you should also keep a gun under your bathroom sink, or hanging from a shower curtain.

But the thing about this is that these firearms should only be for one specific purpose – to fight off incorrectly used words.

That's right, even in your own home, late at night when you are just relaxing with your loved ones, among your own hard-earned possessions, words that are not actually words can suddenly be breaking through your front window, traumatising your children and making love to your wife. What are you going to do when that happens? Are you going to just sit there and let the scene burn into your retinas? Or are you going to pull out your weapon and defend your loved ones like a warrior!?

Of course, by 'weapon', I mean your knowlege of grammar, and by 'firearm', I mean your astute oneness with language. And nowhere are these devices self-defense needed more than in the case of the confusion surrounding the words alright and all right.

A lot of people are confused about what the difference is between alright and all right. Luckily, this is a pretty easy problem to sort out, because alright is not a real word, in the same vein that 'alot' is not a word.

The best thing to do here is to remember this saying that Bill Walsh penned in his book, 'Lapsing into a Comma': 'alright is not all right'

Snap, Bill Walsh.

And don't forget, grammar children, always keep your weapons of grammar-knowledge loaded, and in an easy-to-reach place around the house.