Affected by an Effect
High school students get to struggle with the fine distinctions between affect and effect. Then they go to college. Those who study science or engineering tend to use effect in place of affect, and those who study law do the opposite — they tend to use affect in place of effect. And then editors try to get everyone back to what they learned in high school but forgot.
I wasn’t thinking of such things (I was thinking of the tendency of lawyers to use which in place of that) when I ran across this attorney-authored article that had one copy of the verb affect in the title, and two copies of the noun effect in the first line. And then I wondered whether the author did this for effect.
I don’t like the title of this piece. It’s not very informative. That, plus I’m not thrilled with the alliteration of the Affect effect.
The three California laws mentioned in the article are responses to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. That’s the thread that ties them together. Given that, I would probably refer to Sarbanes-Oxley in the title of this article. I’d probably give it a title along these lines:
California Conforms to Sarbanes-Oxley
I believe that’s a more effective title: one that makes it easier for interested readers to find the article.
