Grammar: affect and effect

My spelling is, to say the least, below par. My grammar is too, probably, although I'm less worried about that, after all language is about communication and if the textbook rules contradict the fluidity of my speech so much the worse for the rules I say.

What you can get away with grammatically you sadly cannot in the field of spelling. If you can't spell (like me) people will not just think worse of you, they'll feel they have the right to tell you too!

I do actually quite like people correcting my spelling as it helps me raise my game - although politeness is always appreciated, naturally.

Of course, spellcheck is a blessing and a danger. A blessing because it picks up my most obvious mistakes (and regular typos, for the life of me I can't type the word 'particular' without getting the L in the wrong place - and I do know where it goes!), but a danger because it has no sense of the appropriate word, only misspellings.

Take effect and affect. Someone (very kindly) has just pointed out that I'd used the wrong version in a sentence but it's a rule that for the life of me I just cannot remember. So I've gone and looked it up;

To affect something is to change or influence it, To effect something is a rather formal way of saying `to make it happen'.

Confusingly, either may produce an 'effect' or result. ('An affect' is a technical term in psychology.)

So if it's a noun you use 'e' unless you're using it in a technical sense. If something affects someone it's an 'a' and if someone effects something - it's an 'e'. Sort of.

Do you know what - I don't think I'm going to remember this, but maybe writing it down will have helped.