In which 'Sail goes GRAMMAR NAZI on all y'all....

[ladyasul]

It has been brought to my attention by someone asking a question about which way of writing something was correct, that there are an awful lot of people that get confused about English grammar. Not to say that English grammar itself isn't confusing, or even headdesk-worthy at times, but I got to thinking about it. Yeah, I know, that leads to TL;DR posts, and I should know better by now, but I GOT ENCOURAGED when talking about it with them, and now... now you all get THIS post to deal with.

Spelling/Grammar lessons, with a gamer twist!

Hopefully you find it both amusing and educational. ♥

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Affect / Effect
"Affect," as a verb means "influence." "Effect" as a noun means "result" and as a verb, "to result in."

To confuse things further, "affect" has another meaning, which is similar to "facade," but as a verb, kind of like "impression." It's normally used in the noun form "affectation," such as when someone acts in some way, to give a specific impression, but "affectation" usually implies falseness or insincerity.

• Balzac affects your party members in just one way. If it's cast successfully, it will effect the RAGE status on them.
• I can't help but wonder what effect casting Zotzillaha Bane on Camazotz would have, if any at all. Maybe it would only affect his size, and not his markings or head placement?
• Sheffield's affected kindness was a shallow thing indeed.
• Careful with your use of "affect" as in the Sheffield example, or some people may get the impression that your attempts at enriching your vocabulary are only an affectation of high intellect.

Alot / A lot / Allot
Please take note, "alot" is not a word. That's right. It does not exist. It's two words, "a lot." Not one. "Allot" means "distribute."

• Holy crud, that's a lot of points to allot to your Agility stat. What are you planning on doing, outracing all the enemies?

Its / It's
This one breaks the rules on possessives. "Its" is the possessive, while "it's" is only a contraction of "it is."

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All Together / Altogether
Aloud / Allowed
Baited / Bated
Bias
Defuse / Diffuse
Discreet / Discrete
Hoard / Horde
Lose / Loose
Per Se / Per Say
Than / Then
There / Their / They're
Throws / Throes
Should've / Should Of
Weather / Whether
Where / Wear / Were / We're
Your / You're

plural/possessive/plural+possessive
elipses, semicolons, run-on sentences/commas

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If anyone has further suggestions for confused words/punctuation/spellings/etc for me to put in this post, please let me know!