Lurking from within Twitter a vicious little creature gazes into my eyes and provokes me to fight it. I have stumbled across him twice today already and many, many times in the past. The misuse of homonyms, my old friend whom I partially hate and partially await to see, almost expecting people to fire it at me. To read about homonyms look up one of my previous articles. One of numerous examples of homonyms are the words affect and effect. Even though they’re similar they carry different meanings.
Affect or Effect?
To affect is a verb and means to influence something or somebody. Effect is a noun which means something that was brought by a cause. A synonym for effect is result. Look at the following example:
Princess Diana's death affected me deeply or: Princess Diana’s death had a deep effect on me.
To effect on the other hand is a verb too although used rarely and means to accomplish something e.g. I’m trying to effect a change in the way we use English.
Two/to/too and There/their/they're
Other examples of homonyms are two/to/too and there/their/they're.Two is a quantifier and simply means 2. To is a preposition and toomeans as well as. Look at the following: I have two brothers who go to school and I go to school too. There indicates location, their means belonging to them and they’re stands for they are e.g. Their sandwiches are there and they’re going to eat them.
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