Affect Vs Effect

[EdithGrantham]

I've read up on how to use each of these properly, had it explained to me many times in many ways and I still cannot get it. Occasionally I'll be confident that effect is right but I'm less sure when I should use affect. Am I right in saying it can never be "an affect" and could someone please tell me the correct one in these sentences to try and make it finally make sense to me.

The traffic really effects/affects my journey time.

The traffic effected/affected my journey time.

Personally I avoid the use of both affect and effect and stick 'impact' in it's place, it's still incorrect but doesn't seem to get pulled up on as frequently as using affect/effect incorrectly.

@Singleandproud , do you say special impacts and describe someone as impacted?

RAVEN: R - Affect - Verb - Effect - Noun

I should have said when I write things, or I check on grammarly or similar. Verbally I would use affects/effects and most people don't pick up if it's correct or not.

Special impacts ...no but not sure I've ever written about special effects.

Someone being impacted by something, sure, if the rest of the sentence made sense.

Really?

I can identify nouns and verbs but this one still trips me up, I'm not sure if the extra examples have helped or hindered my understanding.

The extra examples haven't had a positive effect (?) on my understanding.

Think of an effect as a result of something. An affect is an influence- something affects you.

You could say "climate change has effected a change in the weather". Not very obscure (although inelegant to repeat the word "change"). "Climate change has affected the weather" would have a very similar meaning.

"Affect" is used as a noun quite commonly in psychology where it broadly means "mood".

In the sentence 'An early release scheme came into effect earlier this week' (BBC text this morning), is 'effect' a noun or is 'to come into effect' a verb? I read it and it made me think I'd find this thread and ask.

It’s a noun. Try replacing it with a word that’s clearly a verb or a noun “came into jump”? (Verb) Nope. “Came into London”? (Noun) Yep that works.

To come is the verb.

Thank you.