Ask the English Teacher

"Effect" as a verb

Betty writes:
Would you please discuss “effect” used as a verb (as opposed to “affect”)?

This is a thorny issue! "Affect" and "effect" are often confused. Let's start with their most common usages.

"Affect" is usually a verb meaning "to influence": How will this quiz affect my grade?

"Effect" is usually a noun meaning "result" or "consequence": The quiz had a bad effect on my grade.

But both words have other meanings as well. "Affect" can be a noun meaning "display of emotion": The killer displayed no affect when shown photos of his victims.

This is a rather technical word, used by psychologists but not by most people. (It's also where we get the word "affectionate.")

And to answer Betty's question, "effect" can be a verb meaning "to bring about," "to cause," or "to achieve": He effected his escape with knotted bedsheets. You will effect these changes on Monday.

This is another "technical" word, more used by bureaucrats than by ordinary people.

I wish I could affect my students' usage of these words!

As It Happens...

April writes:
I would like to ask you what kind of verb is "happens" in the following sentence. We are taking up "kinds of verbs" in our English class and I find it difficult to label "happens."
 
The first convict to die by lethal injection happens to be Echegaray.
 
Is this a linking verb, a transitive verb or an intransitive verb. I think it is a linking verb, but happens does not fall under list of linking verbs.

"Happen" is an intransitive verb—that is, it doesn't transmit an action like "kick" or "kiss" or "tell." It means to take place or occur, especially by chance. So poor Echegaray isn't the first to die because he is the worst criminal on Death Row—it's the result of luck. Maybe it's even good luck, since he might have been executed slowly and painfully!

The word comes from the Old Norse happ, meaning chance or luck. So when we're "happy," we feel "lucky." When we're "hapless," we're unlucky.

Share? or Share In?

Stacy writes:
Is the following wording proper (or at least acceptable) usage?

Stacy and Paul
invite you to share
the joy of their marriage
Saturday, the twenty-ninth of October
blah, blah, blah.

or does one share IN the joy of their marriage?

This is killing me.

I hasten to reply, because a wedding is stressful enough without this kind of worry!

I recommend "share in" because one meaning, according to my dictionary, is "to have a part; participate: with in." Your wedding guests, bless them, will have a part in the fun of the event. But you are not going to "divide and give out in shares" the happiness of the day. Your guests will have to participate to get the joy.

They will, however, share the cake without any "in" required—because you and Paul will divide it and give it out in shares.

Congratulations, by the way, and I hope Paul will kiss the bride for me!

Suspended Hyphens

Betty writes:
My question is regarding the use of the hyphen in a phrase such as “four to five-hour workload”. Is this correct?

Very good question! A major use of hyphens is to link two or more words into a single unit, usually to modify some other word or phrase. In this case it's not a "four" workload that's also an "hour" workload—it's a four-hour workload. The hyphenated words act as a single compound adjective for "workload."

But in this case the modifier is more complicated: the workload ranges between four and five hours. It would be wordy and repetitious to say "four-hour to five-hour workload." So we use a suspended hyphen to indicate we've left out a word:

four- to five-hour workload

The suspended hyphen is a signal: You're not getting the complete compound adjective, but you'll understand it before you reach the noun it's modifying. Note that the suspended hyphen must have a blank space after it. Here are a few more examples:

We heard pro- and anti-war arguments.
He was a major figure in 18th- and 19th-century philosophy.
English- and Chinese-speaking delegates had trouble with the simultaneous translation of the speeches.

While I'm ranting about hyphens, I'll comment on when not to use them: In compound modifiers that contain an "ly" adverb. So it's fine to write

a high-powered engine

but if a perfume has a strong scent, write

a highly scented perfume

For the same reason, remember to write

a barely noticeable noise
a seemingly insoluble problem

—and save your hyphens for when you really need them!

AD or A.D.?

Janice asks:
Has abbreviating A.D. and B.C. changed with usage as other abbreviations have?

In more ways than you think! The Canadian Press Stylebook, which is a pretty reliable guide, suggests that we drop the periods from all-capitals abbreviations unless they are geographical or refer to individual persons.

So we should drop the periods from AD (Anno Domini, year of our Lord), and BC (Before Christ), but keep them in B.C. (British Columbia).

Doing that, however, ignores the tendency to drop periods from all commonly used abbreviations. CP Style tells us to write L.A. and U.S.A., but most of us would write LA and USA...it's quicker! I'm as lazy as anyone, so I prefer naming my home province as BC. I even drop the periods out of my own initials!

Went missing

Renee asks:
I am writing to ask for your expertise on the phrase "went missing" - the media sorts seem to use this phrase for the many disappearances of folk. It sounds wacky and I am not sure why. A person could have engaged in a sport (went skiing), or on a retail mission (went shopping). The verb and -ing connection is used for some activities. But, could a person have gone on a missing venture - thereby, be referred as "went missing?"

I appreciate the education on this current description. (I think "gone missing" is also used and it, too, sounds wacky.)

I've heard the expressions so often I hadn't thought about them, but when you raised the question I immediately guessed that they're British expressions. So they might well sound odd to Americans. I then found a website full of discussion of the origins of clichés. And here is what I read (reformatted to make it easier to read):

The Westcoast Reader

My good friend Joan Acosta, the prizewinning editor of The Westcoast Reader, has created a blog for her monthly newspaper. It's a wonderful resource for people learning English, and it comes with teacher's notes for each issue. Highly recommended!

In the river or by the river?

Kitt writes:
A picture shows a boy sitting beside a river fishing.
Which sentence below is correct and why?
1. The boy is fishing in the river.
2. The boy is fishing by the river.

Given the picture, we should say "by the river," meaning beside or near the river. If we saw the boy wearing hip-waders (a rubber garment worn like overalls) and standing in the water up to his waist, we would say he is fishing IN the river. It all depends on where the boy is—not where the fish are!

More Simple?

Assaf writes:
I recently wrote an English test and part of the test was a Cloze passage where you fill in the missing word.

A point was taken off for the following sentence "Edison's Inventions made people's lives more ______ ." I would like to know if filling in "simple" in the missing space is correct. I know it is better English to use the word "simpler" instead of "more simple" but is this just convention or is there an actual English grammar rule forbidding the usage of this form. As far as I know in school I always learned that words with more than two syllables can get either a "more" or the addition "-er" except for a few exceptions such as "beautiful" or longer syllable words.

I agree that "simpler" would be a briefer answer. But "more simple" is also correct. It's a pretty rare usage, though. By the way, you can't double an intensifier—"simpler" means "more simple," so "more simpler" would mean "more more simple." For the same reason you can't say "most biggest" or "more happier."

Nevertheless, William Shakespeare himself broke this rule in his play Julius Caesar when Marc Antony is speaking at Caesar's funeral. Pointing to the dead man's wounds, Marc Antony says: "This was the most unkindest cut of all." And English teachers have been embarrassed for four centuries about that!

Prepositions and Articles

Nilay writes:
Wonder if you can help me with these sentences:

1. She does not have passing marks in Mathematics.
2. He pleaded guilty of stealing money from the shop.
3. She took shower and got ready.

Please let me know whether these sentences are correct both syntactically and usage-wise. And if not, why?

The first sentence is correct. Using a capital M on "Mathematics" indicates that it's a particular course, not the entire subject of mathematics. For that reason, we usually say something like "Mathematics 100" or "Introductory Mathematics"—so that it's clear what the student is failing.

The second sentence has an error in preposition use. He may be guilty OF stealing. But when he pleads—that is, responds to the charge of stealing—he should plead guilty TO stealing. And if the police suspect him because he's been seen with known thieves, then the police may consider him guilty BY association.

In the third sentence, we would say "She took A shower." For people who speak languages without articles, English is crazy: Sometimes we need A, sometimes we need THE, and sometimes we need neither! And native English speakers are so used to this craziness that we can't explain it.

Well, I will try: She takes A shower when it's just like every other shower she takes every day. If something about this shower is different, we could say: "The shower ran out of hot water." If we want to mention something special once she is in the shower stall, we could say: "The noise of the shower was loud."

Since English nouns can also be verbs, we could also avoid the need for an article by writing: "She showered and got ready."