"Affect" or "effect"?

- On the first day of school this year, I saw an English professor tweet that he had just looked up the difference between affect and effect. So you definitely shouldn't feel bad if you aren't sure of the difference either. There's a simple story and then some exceptions. Most of the time, affect with an a is a verb, and effect with an e is a noun. Verbs show that someone or something is doing something, an action. So the sun affects my ability to see the screen on my laptop. The weather affected our sales last quarter. In both those cases, affect is describing something the subject of the sentence is doing. The sun is making it so I can't see my monitor, and the weather is causing our sales to grow. Also note that you can often replace affect, the verb, with a more specific action. Instead of the sun affects my ability to see, you could write, the sun hurts my ability to see. Instead of the weather affected our sales, you could write, the weather increased our sales. Let's move on to effect as a noun. You probably remember that a noun is a person, place, or thing. Well, in effect, a noun is a thing. The effect of changing the law is unknown. The effect is a thing, a thing that's going to happen. She's studying the effect of ocean temperature on coral reefs. Again, the effect is a thing, a thing she's studying. So maybe you're thinking, "Great, but how do I know "whether I'm dealing with a noun or a verb?" Well, there are two things you can do with a noun that you can't do with a verb, make it plural and put an article in front of it. You can have one effect or many effects. The effect of changing the law is unknown, or the effects of changing the law are unknown. If you can make it singular or a plural, you know it's a noun. And having an article in front of it or being able to put an article in front of it is also a big clue that it's a noun. There's that article, the, in front of our word, so we know it's a noun. You can't do that with a verb. The sun the affects my ability to see. No way. The weather the affected our sale. Nope, it doesn't work, so you know those are verbs. And now, I have a memory trick for you. Think of a big, black raven. Picture it in your mind because the word raven has the letters A-V-E-N in it, and those stand for Affect Verb, Effect Noun. If you can remember the raven and think of those letters, you can remember when to use affect with an a and effect with an e, most of the time. Unfortunately, there are a few exceptions that you just have to memorize. Affect with an a is also a noun in psychology. So when you're saying that someone has a happy affect or is displaying a sad affect, then it's a noun and it's spelled with an a. And effect with an e is a verb in the phrase, effect change. So if you're writing about attending the annual meeting in the hope that you can effect change on some policies, that's spelled with an e, but those instances are rare. If you picture the raven and remember Affect Verb, Effect Noun, you'll almost always use the right word.