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Comment by c22 | Hacker News Reader

This is a stupid grammar nitpick I only offer in the hopes that you find it useful for your writing. No dismissal of your arguments or denigration of your character is intended.

I think you want the word "affected" in your second paragraph. Effects are the result of causation, whereas affect refers to the causation. The citizens were affected by the effects of this policy.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384716 and marked it off-topic.

(As often happens, the root comment wasn't so bad, but the subthread is terrible.)

Contrary to the opinions of others, I appreciated your post. While a nitpick, you provided the both the correction and a good way to remember which word is used in which situation. As someone who has to stop to consider which one to use sometimes, I appreciate the extra effort.

You may be interested to know --- well, I find it interesting --- that there are lesser known meanings of 'affect' and 'effect' which are the other way round. You can effect a change, where 'effect' a verb. And people can have an affect, where 'affect' is a noun largely synonymous to 'mood'.

I believe it's even possible to affect affects by effecting an affect effect, in effect. English is weird.

(Linguistic tangents are best tangents!)

You may be able to distinguish between mood-noun "affect" and influence-verb "affect" by pronunciation. I place the emphasis for the former on the first syllable, just as in "affectation" whereas the emphasis is on the second syllable in the latter. So they are homonyms, but not exactly homophones.

I never liked the verb sense of effect. It always seemed to me to be too much like a managementspeak verbizating torturement of the ordinary noun sense of effect. Obviously, the verb sense means "to produce an effect", but are you really gonna diss the perfectly cromulent already-existing word that has meant that for longer--"affect"? ~

In condimentarius scriptor apostrophe delenda est.

You actually wrote two paragraphs to tell somebody they misspelled with an 'e' instead of an 'a'

I'm sure we've all wasted keystrokes on stupider things.

Yea, but it just getting old? I'm glad someone finally said something. Think of it this way, you loose your residence, and job. In turn, I tell you, "Well, nature is beautiful?".

And yes, we can all find grammatical mistakes. Now, producing something worth reading is another story?

Yeah it is just getting old. A pedant picks up on a single spelling mistake in three paragraphs of perfectly fine text, and it's a matter worthy of commentary. No matter how politely it's phrased, or how elegantly the correction presented, that's just plain ignorant.

The fact that it got upvoted too just illustrates the commentariat are more interested in style over substance.

I agree, which is why I virtually never make comments about minor errors in execution and why I felt compelled to add a disclaimer to this one. I just find that this particular error is very subtle and trips a lot of people up so thought it might be helpful to highlight in case it was not a simple typo. I never expected it to garner this much diversive conversation.

I was surprised that your comment got voted to the top of the pile, and that any chastisement on that got flagged and downvoted.

Unreal.

You meant "lose," not "loose." ;)

Good grammar never gets old. In fact, it boosts your income: http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/03/11/rep...

> Now, producing something worth reading is another story?

I've become less of a grammar nazi over the years (falling in love with a dyslexic woman will just... force you to do that lol), but I see it as kind of like colorblindness... If everyone is telling you your colors don't match, and you don't see it, it doesn't mean it doesn't bother them (or that you shouldn't care). Or if you're deaf and make random noises that you don't hear, but they bother others... perhaps you should figure out how to stop. That sort of thing. It's a discord thing.

Stupider yes, more patronising perhaps not.

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