All good journalists make mistakes. All good desk hands make typos. No mistake is acceptable, but some can be understandable. And some are simply not admissible even as oversights. One such confusable pair of words people invariably make mistakes with is affect vs effect.
To affect means to have an effect on. Effect is usually the noun; effect as a verb means to bring about in an effective manner. In a less common usage, one can affect (show off) something in an ostentatious manner. Elementary, really. You would have learnt to differentiate between the two words in school. You wouldn't, of course, if you went to the wrong school.
Here are two bloomers from a recent item on ibnlive.com. The first is a screaming headline (March 3, 2007):
2nd phase of CRR hike comes into affect
No, it was not an oversight or a typo. The second para had it too:
The second phase of the increase CRR by 25 basis points comes into affect from Saturday, absorbing about Rs 7,000 crore from the banking system and putting further pressure on liquidity conditions.
The mistake was in the original wire creed from the Press Trust of India. No desk hand bothered to correct it on ibnlive.com, or the Hindu too.
A moneycontrol.com copy (March 5, 2007) had the correct usage with:
Weakness in global markets, concerns that rising interest rates will affect equity valuations and worries that a strong IPO pipeline may affect liquidity from secondary markets has triggered a sharp correction.
Simply put: you either have a negative effect on something, or affect it adversely.
