premkrishna wrote:
When the professional tensions start affecting your personal life, the effects can be very damaging.
I got this sentence as an explanation for usage of affect and effect. The explanation read as 'Affect is always a verb' but in this case I doubt it because of the 'ing' form. Can someone please explain.
Dear
premkrishna,
I'm happy to respond.
This is a subtle area, and in fact, many native English speakers don't understand it fully. The good news is that the GMAT will not test any of these subtleties.
The word "
affect" most commonly is used as a verb, and means "
to influence; to have an impact on."
The Moon affects the ocean's tides.
How does the commodity market affect the options market? The use of "
affect" as a verb is very common, and a likely use on the GMAT.
There are a few more sophisticated and subtle definitions of this and related words.
One is "
affected" in the sense of "
artificial and pretentious."
"
He had an affected manner" means
He was inauthentically acting as if her were better than other peopleAnother is "
affect" used as a noun, meaning "emotional appearance."
"
After the accident, she demonstrated flat affect." =
she was not showing any emotion on her face after the accident Similarly, "
affective" means related to the emotions; if someone has an "
affective disorder," this means they have a pattern of deep emotional problems.
These alternate uses of "affect" and related words are quite unlikely to appear on the GMAT.
The word "
effect" most commonly is used as a noun, and means "
consequence, result"
Poverty has many unfortunate effects on inner city life.
Better paying jobs is often one of the effects of a college education. The word "
effect" can also be used as a verb, and it means "to cause" in a very deliberate and intentional way.
The 1960s civil rights movement in the USA effected a change in heart among many citizens, but not all.
This is also a sophisticated and little-used sense of the word that many native English speakers would not know or understand. You are not likely to see this on the GMAT.
For GMAT purposes, "
affect" is a verb and "
effect" is a noun.
Notice that the "-
ing" suffix is a verb ending. This is added only to verb, so the very fact that we added it to "
affect" to produce "
affecting" proves that "
affect" is a verb. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/the-ing-form-of-a-verb/Does all this make sense?
Mike