One of the most common mistakes in academic writing is to confuse affect and effect. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to use these two words properly. Doing so can make a small but meaningful contribution to the quality of your academic papers and research papers.
As a verb, affect means ‘to act on, to produce a chance in.’ As a noun, effect means ‘something that is caused—a result or consequence.’ Therefore, for example,
Her tears affected me deeply.
The effect of the armed incursion was a war.
Automobile use affects the climate through the Greenhouse Effect.
Effect also has a special meaning in statistics—for example, in the Cohen’s d measure of effect size.
Good research papers display the proper use of language, and, accordingly, using affect and effect properly can help to improve your research papers.
