Today’s Garner Usage Tip of the Day talks about the “blunder” of using effect when it should be affect, and vice versa. As Garner’s tip correctly says, affect means to influence or have an effect on; whereas, effect means to bring about or carry it out. John Trimble says that “[f]ew word pairs can rival these terrors for the headaches they breed.”
That being so, let’s delve deeper into the issue, even though the difference between the meanings of affect and effect when used as verbs should be fairly elementary to even the most inexperienced legal writers.
Longman Guide to English Usage attributes the same meanings as Garner does above to effect and affect and also provides the meanings for affect and effects when both are used as nouns (which is beyond the scope of this post).
The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage says that, as verbs, affect and effect are “words of totally different meaning neither of which can ever be substituted for each other.” Fowler says that affect means to “have an influence on, produce an effect on, concern, [or] effect a change in.” Effect, on the other hand, means to “bring about, cause, produce, result in, have a result, [or] accomplish.”
The following sentences are examples of the common misuse of affect and effect in legal writing:
Only legislative action can affect [effect] a change in the law.
Being sanctioned by the court effected [affected] John’s good standing within the legal community.
Sometimes, writers use effectuate when they should use effect. You should avoid it, even though some have found that effectuate is much more common than effect (the example in the preceding link was “to effectuate the legislature’s intent,” which the author found to be much more common than “to effect the legislature’s intent”).
Garner’s Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage says that “stylists have generally considered effect the preferable word,” and effectuate a “needless variant.” But Garner nonetheless counsels that effect and effectuate are not synonymous, and that both may be used correctly in certain contexts: effect meaning “to cause to happen, to bring about,” and effectuate meaning “to give effect to, to bring into effect.”
Under these rules, then, it would be proper to write: To effect a change in the law, the legislature had to enact the legislation. But to effectuate the legislature’s intent, the department had to promulgate new rules.
Regardless of the fine distinction between effect and effectuate, if you are unsure about which word to use you should use effect, which is much more common in legal writing than effectuate and thus the safer word choice. Or, preferably, you should consult your usage and style books before making the choice.