Your Business Communications Are YOU

A communications from your company – regardless of who writes it – is your company. Whatever format; letters, memos, reports, or emails, written words represent you to clients, co-workers, and customers. What your employees write and how it's written represents your entire organization in the minds of the readers. You can't afford to appear in linguistic disarray any more than you can in sartorial slovenliness.

Effective Business Communications
To stay productive and profitable, your employees need to be aware of the importance of the proper use of grammar, syntax, and punctuation. Their word choices need to be accurate and clear. The structure of their communication media must be correct.

Effective Email Communications
Your employees need to be trained in the skills of email communication to maintain:
· Professionalism – properly written emails convey a professional image
· Efficiency – properly written emails save time and money
· Protection – properly written emails can help avoid legal actions

Effective Offshore Communications
Success in business dealings too often depends on communication with people whose first language isn't American English. If anyone is not sure when the 08/11/07 meeting will be held, what time half-ten is, and what 2.45 means, writing for a non-American audience can present many unexpected, confusing, and costly missteps.

Call on Bill Moore
The Professional Business Language Workshops are created to address any or all of these areas of written language for your specific business. For information on customized content, scheduling, and pricing, call 248.547.8217 or email moore_words@comcast.net.

This Will Affect You, and the Effect Will Be Long-lasting

OK, boys and girls, let’s try it one more time. All together, now: When do you use affect and when do you use effect? And the answer? For most people, it’s, “Damned if I know.” Of all the near-homophonic words in our language, these two seem to cause the most people the most trouble. They look too much alike, they sound too much alike, and they never mean the same thing. What’s a body to do?

My personal approach is to keep a copy of Write Rite Right close at hand so I can look up the correct usage. Barring that, just a single sheet of paper will hold all the information you need. The difficulty arises from being able to sort out the nuances in the use of the words. The only approach that works for me is to have the various meanings noted and then to have as many examples as possible of sentences in which the words are used correctly. That way, I can use a sentence as a model, and, by substituting my words in strategic places, I can write it right.

First off, let’s look at two givens: These two words have no senses in common. They’re easily mixed up, but they’re never interchangeable. An obvious reason for the confusion created by these words among writers is that any good dictionary will list about eight meanings for effect just as a noun. Then there’s effect as a verb and affect as either a noun or a verb. I’ve never counted all the possible meanings, but there must be about fifteen between the two. We’ll start trying to sort it out with affect simply because it’s the alphabetical thing to do.

Affect is most often used as a verb that relates to either influence or manner. It describes how actions influence conditions and other people or how and a person acts. I affect you when you read this. That’s the influence. I can affect a British accent. That’s the action. Most often, though, it’s used as a verb to mean to have an influence on. For example: Rising gas prices affect everyone one way or another.

Here’s a couple of good tricks you can use to test your usage. When you use affect in the sense of having a influence on, you should be able to substitute a form of influence in its place. So, you can write, “The high winds affected the level of the water in the bay.” You can also write, “The high winds influenced the level of the water in the bay.” When you use affect as a verb to mean a way of acting, you should be able to substitute put on in its place. You can write, “Why did she affect that attitude of sorrow?” Or, “Why did she put on that attitude of sorrow.”

Affect is also used as a noun to mean an external display of emotion. A person's affect is the expression of emotion or feelings seen by others. This use of the word is usually restricted to psychiatrists and social scientists, and, if you’re not in one of these fields, you could probably go most of your life without ever using affect as a noun. An example is: The Queen’s affect successfully masked her true feelings. BTW, the influence trick doesn’t work here. (So, we’ve already learned something useful. If you always use influence and put on and don’t become a psychiatrist, you’ll probably never have any trouble with affect.)

Effect is the word you’ll probably use 90% of the time. Fortunately, there’s some tricks that can help you use it right. First thing to remember is that effect always relates to causation. It describes something that results in action. That’s why it’s most often used as a noun that means a result or outcome. For example: What was the effect of your show of force? The trick is that when you use effect as a noun, it’s almost always preceded by an or the as in, “the effect on” or “an effect of” or by an adjective as in, “the awful effect.” Effect can also be an object as in, “purely for the effect.”

Effect, is sometimes used as a verb. In this case, it means to cause to happen or come about. For example: Rising gas prices effect a change in how people drive. The trick here is that when you use effect as a verb, you should be able to substitute a form of cause in its place. You can write, “The new rule effected the kind of change we hoped for.” You can also write, “The new rule caused the kind of change we hoped for.” Like affect as a noun, effect as a verb is not often used and seldom a problem.

Let’s see if we can put it all in a nut shell.

Uses as a verb:

Affect as a verb shows a direct influence or a manner of behavior. Your words affect me deeply. The words have a direct impact. How I feel is a result of your words. The words change me. On the other hand, I can affect a sense of interest in what you say. I’m not interested, but I act like I am.

Effect as a verb shows a causal relationship. Your words effected a great change in me. The words didn’t change me, but they caused me to change.

Uses as a noun:

Affect as a noun relates to something that can be seen. It’s either a subject or an object in a sentence. He walked with an affect that made us wonder.

Effect as a noun is, logically, always a thing. It can be seen or felt. The drug’s effect was stronger than the doctor expected.