English usage blog

“How does this effect you?”.  Here we are using “effect” as a verb, and this is the wrong usage.

From wiktionary:

The verbal noun uses of affect are distinguished from the verbal noun uses of effect more clearly than the regular verb forms. An affect is something that acts or acted upon something else. But an effect is the result of an action (by something else).

The difference here is quite subtle.

As an example, a common phrase which uses “effect” as a verb is: “to effect change”.  A way to remember this, is by remembering the butterfly:  Have you heard of the Butterfly Effect?

To make use of the google spell checker:  If you type “this effect you” into google search, it will reply Did you mean: “this affect you”.  For example “how will this affect you” is the correct usage of “affect”.

I don’t know if you will agree with me, but I think it is not O.K. to say “I could care less”, when you mean “I couldn’t care less”.

Apparently Computerworld thinks it is OK to use the incorrect usage, see Google Phone: Why I Could Care Less…For Now.

I thought this was an attempt at a clever headline, offering a play on words of the common phrase “I couldn’t care less”, but having a quick read of the article, it was obvious that this writer just didn’t know the meaning of his own headline.

It was particularly amusing to see that the first comment for the article went as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Hi there,

When someone starts a sentence with “ten times”, for example, “smokers are ten times”, do what do you expect the next word to be?  ”Less” or “More”?  Does one of the examples below sound wrong to you?

“Smokers are four times more likely to be able to kick the habit…” or

“Children are seven times less likey to smoke if they perceive strong parental disapproval…”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi guys,

I have covered a few homophones on this blog.  I thought I would take a look at the word “Homophone”.

The wiktionary entry says:

1. A word which is pronounced the same as another word but differs in spelling or meaning or origin, for example: carat, caret, carrot, and karat.^[1][2] Read the rest of this entry »

Hi guys,

Has anyone noticed this one: people using the word disclaimer, when they mean disclosure!  This is one of those things that I have noticed a few times, mostly when people are posting on a forum or on the comments of a blog.  It’s idiomatic to write a disclaimer and it makes fun of disclaimers on content found on line, and in real life.

From the wiktionary enty on “disclaim”: Read the rest of this entry »