Your Grammar Nazi

Dave Zirin, my favorite sportswriter, has a great column in The Nation about the attacks on player health and safety by the National Football League owners. A great column, except ... 

Dave! Don't do this to me! I'm just going to pretend that a brand-new Nation intern edited this groaner into your copy.

What a sign of the times that the start of the season wasn’t punctuated today with chest-thumping and military flyovers but with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s announcement that the league’s owners would be donating $30 million to the National Institute of Health to further study the affects of brain injuries.

Almost every time, the noun is Effect and the verb is Affect.  Grammar Girl explains:

It's actually pretty straightforward. The majority of the time you use affect with an a as a verb and effect with an e as a noun.

 When Should You Use Affect?

Affect with an a means "to influence," as in, "The arrows affected Ardvark," or "The rain affected Amy's hairdo." Affect can also mean, roughly, "to act in a way that you don't feel," as in, "She affected an air of superiority."

When Should You Use Effect?

Effect with an e has a lot of subtle meanings as a noun, but to me the meaning "a result" seems to be at the core of all the definitions. For example, you can say, "The effect was eye-popping," or "The sound effects were amazing," or "The rain had no effect on Amy's hairdo."

Read on for the weird exceptions and a memory trick.