Here’s the deal: Affect should be a verb and Effect should be a noun. But Noooooo! Effect has to be stubbornly peevish and fill in for a verb meaning to bring about. Example: Some say greenhouse emissions have effected a change in the environment.
So when I go to expound upon this horrible revelation to my middle school students and see that lost fazed, clueless look on their puerile faces as if to say, Why have you abandoned us, Ms. Dana, and taken all sense of logic, common sense, and rules with you? And that’s when I drop the big grammar bomb akin to Santa Claus isn’t real: The English language is rife with counter-intuitive, subversive, pesky little deviants, as I sheepishly write the following on the board:
Example: Since there is no time like the present,
he thought it was time to present the present!
Take that, English Grammar Zombie Goblin Boogeyman!!!!
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