affect / effect Affect and effect are sometimes confused, but before you can sort them out, you must sort out the two words spelled affect. One means “to put on a false show of,” as in She affected a British accent. The other can be both a noun and a verb. The noun meaning “emotion” is a technical term from psychology that sometimes shows up in general writing, as in this quote from a Norman Mailer piece about the Gulf War: “Of course, the soldiers seen on television had been carefully chosen for blandness of affect. In its far more common role as a verb, affect usually means “to influence,” as in The Surgeon General’s report outlined how smoking affects health. Effect can also serve as a noun or a verb. The noun means “a result.” Thus if you affect something, you are likely to see an effect of some kind, and from this may arise some of the confusion. As a verb, effect means “to bring about or execute.” Thus, using effect in the sentence The measures have been designed to effect savings implies that the measures will cause new savings to come about. But using affect in the very similar sentence These measures may affect savings could just as easily imply that the measures may reduce savings that have already been realized affinity If there is an affinity between two friends, does one then have an affinity for the other? Affinity has a variety of meanings, ranging from “relationship by marriage” (its earliest) to “a resemblance or similarity” and extending to “a natural attraction” and even “a chemical attraction.” The meanings are clear enough, but it’s not always easy to know which preposition to use for each of these senses, especially since other factors can affect your choice, such as which verb you use. Thus you might say you feel a real affinity for (or to or with) your old neighborhood, and you might also say that the affinity between your old neighborhood and the people who once lived there is strong. Thus, while all of these usages are acceptable, there are some restrictions on which prepositions are acceptable with affinity. When affinity means “similarity or resemblance,” the prepositions with, to, and between are standard, and it’s hard to imagine a context where for would make sense. When affinity means “a feeling of kinship or sympathy,” as in I have an affinity for people in their situation, for is perfectly acceptable. In some metaphorical uses, as in writing about food, for tends to predominate: Lamb has a distinct affinity for red wines. In chemical contexts, for is the preposition of choice: the blood’s affinity for oxygen, a dye with an affinity for synthetic fabrics affirmative The expressions in the affirmative and in the negative are thought to come from military aviation, where pilots use affirmative and negative as synonyms for yes and no in radio transmissions. The idea is that the longer words are less likely to get lost in static. But when used in ordinary contexts, such as She answered in the affirmative, these expressions almost always sound pompous. She answered yes would be more acceptable even at the most formal levels of style. agenda It is true that Cicero would have used agendum to refer to a single item of business before the Roman Senate, with agenda as its plural. But in Modern English agenda is used as a singular noun to denote the set or list of such items, as in The agenda for the meeting has not yet been set. If a plural of agenda is required, the form should be agendas: The agendas of both meetings are exceptionally varied aggravate Aggravate need not be an aggravating word. It comes from the Latin verb aggravare, which has two meanings: “to make heavier,” that is, “to add to the weight of,” and “to annoy,” “oppress,” “burden.” When some people nowadays claim that aggravate should mean only “to make worse” and not “to irritate,” they ignore not only an English sense in use since the 17th century but also one of the original Latin ones alibi You may be glad you have an alibi if you’re hauled into court, but you may not want one if you’re merely called on the carpet. When used as a noun in its nonlegal sense of “an excuse,” alibi splits the Usage Panel in half. Forty- nine percent accept it in the sentence He always had a ready alibi for the quality of his service. When alibi is used as an intransitive verb meaning “to make excuses,” as in If you must alibi, at least try to be convincing, it is unacceptable to 72 percent of the panel       all that The construction all that is used informally in questions and negative sentences to mean “to the degree expected,” as in I know it won an Oscar, but the film is not all that exciting. In an earlier survey, the Usage Panel rejected the use of this construction in formal writing all in negative sentences Be careful with sentences that have an all … not … form. They may be hazardous to your clarity. The sentence All of the departments did not file a report may mean that some departments did not file or that none did. If you want the first meaning, you can express it unambiguously by saying Not all of the departments filed a report. If you want the second meaning, try a paraphrase such as None of the departments filed a report or All of the departments failed to file a report. Note that the same problem can arise with other universal terms like every in negated sentences, as in the ambiguous Every department did not file a report         alleged An alleged burglar is someone who has been accused of being a burglar but whose innocence or guilt has yet to be established. An alleged incident is an event that is said to have taken place but has not yet been verified. In their zeal to protect the rights of the accused, newspapers and law enforcement officials sometimes misuse alleged. A man arrested for murder may be only an alleged murderer, for example, but he is a real, not an alleged, suspect in that his status as a suspect is not in doubt. Similarly, if the money from a safe is known to have been stolen and not merely mislaid, then we can safely speak of a theft without having to qualify the description with alleged       all right / alright Is it all right to use alright? Despite the appearance of alright in the works of such well-known writers as Flannery O’Connor, Langston Hughes, and James Joyce, the merger of all and right has never been accepted as standard. This is peculiar, since similar fusions like already and altogether have never raised any objections. The difference may lie in the fact that already and altogether became single words back in the Middle Ages, whereas alright (at least in its current meaning) has only been around for a little over a century and was called out by language critics as a misspelling. You might think a century would be plenty of time for such an unimposing spelling to gain acceptance as a standard variant, and you will undoubtedly come across alright in magazine and newspaper articles. But if you decide to use alright, especially in formal writing, you run the risk that some of your readers will view it as an error, while others may think you are willfully breaking convention       allude / allusion / refer / reference all allusions are references, but are all references allusions? Many people, following the advice of language critics, like to make a distinction between alluding to something and referring to it. By this thinking, allude and allusion should apply to indirect references in which the source is not specifically identified: “Well, we’ll always have Paris,” he told the travel agent, in an allusion to the movie Casablanca. By contrast, refer and reference usually imply specific mention of a source: I will refer to Hamlet for my conclusion: As Polonius says, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” In practice, many writers do not follow this distinction, but it’s certainly worthy of consideration.         alongside / alongside of Both of these forms are acceptable as prepositions. Thus you can say The barge lay alongside (or alongside of) the pier alternative / two or more alternatives You may find yourself in a situation with no alternative, with only one alternative, or with more than one alternative, but can you ever have more than two alternatives? Some traditionalists hold that alternative should be used only in situations where the number of choices involved is exactly two because of the word’s historical relation to Latin alter, “the other of two.” The Usage Panel is evenly divided on the issue, with 49 percent accepting the sentence Of the three alternatives, the first is the least distasteful The complexity of this situation arises from the multiplicity of senses that alternative has. It can mean “a choice or a situation that requires a choice between two things,” as in The only alternative to continuing down the river was to give up and hike out of the gorge. From this it is a short leap in meaning to “one of a number of things from which only one can be chosen,” and here is where we may be forced to choose from several alternatives alternative used as an adjective As an adjective, alternative can mean “allowing or requiring a choice between two or more things,” as in We wrote an alternative statement in case the first was rejected by the board. It may also refer to a variant or substitute in cases where no choice is involved, as in We will do our best to secure alternative employment for employees displaced by the closing of the factory. In its latest usage, alternative indicates things that are outside established traditions or institutions, as in the alternative press or alternative rock.