Peer to Peer Magazine

IMPLY/INFER The Story: As the presidential debates heat up, a few people will be doing much of the former, and many, many more of us will be doing a whole lot of the latter. The Rule: Only a speaker or a writer can "imply"; only a listener or a reader can "infer." A Tip: Note that implying occurs only when the message is going "out" (from the speaker/ writer); inferring occurs only when the message is coming "in" (to the listener/ reader). In-infer. Get it? WHO/WHOM The Story: The most august sources (think American Bar Association) misuse these words, usually writing who when the word should be whom. From the "ABA Journal Weekly Newsletter": "Who do you think Obama would nominate for the Supreme Court?" The Rule: Who is a subject; whom is an object. They are not interchangeable. A Tip: Recast the sentence using he and him. (It's easier to remember the masculine pronoun because him and whom both end with m.) If the subjective he works, then who is correct; if the objective him works, then whom is correct: Who do you think Obama would nominate for the Supreme Court? Recast the sentence with he or him: Do you think Obama would nominate [he/him] for the Supreme Court? Because him is correct, we match whom to him: Whom do you think Obama would nominate for the Supreme Court? AFFECT/EFFECT The Story: One source claims that affect and effect are "the two most frequently looked up words in the dictionary." No wonder: Affect has two distinct meanings as a verb and can also appear as a noun or an adjective. Effect has four meanings as a noun and can also appear as a verb. And this would be a correct sentence: Her affect affected the effect of her testimony. But let us go back to the beginning. The Rule: Affect is a verb meaning "to influence." Affect can also mean "to pretend to." As a noun, affect means "demeanor" or "style of feeling." Affected can be an adjective, describing pretentious behavior — an affected walk. Effect is a noun meaning "result" or "outcome." Effect can also mean "an impression produced" — imagine sound and lighting — or "a state of being operative" — went into effect yesterday. In law, the plural effects refers to one's property — her personal effects. Effect as a verb means "to cause to happen" — to effect change. A Tip: We so rarely use the secondary verb or noun meanings of affect, or the verb form of effect, just remember that affect is the verb and effect is the noun. THAT/WHICH The Story: Many years ago, a firm in Chicago asked me to be an expert witness on the difference between that and which. Don't laugh; riding on the distinction were tens of millions of dollars. Especially in the legal world, we must know the difference. The Rule: A "relative" clause modifies a word (say, bank) and usually begins with that or which. If the clause begins with that, the clause is "restrictive" — it describes only one bank, even though others exist. If the clause begins with which preceded by a comma, the clause is "non-restrictive" because which means there is only one bank, nothing to distinguish: The Commerce Bank that sits at Fifth and Pine does not charge its customers to use the ATM. The Commerce Bank, which sits at Fifth and Pine, does not charge its customers to use the ATM. The first sentence says that of all the Commerce Banks, you won't be charged to use the ATM at the one that "sits at Fifth and Pine." It "restricts" the information in the rest of the sentence to that one Commerce Bank. Without that address, the sentence falls apart. The second sentence says there is only one Commerce Bank — nothing to "restrict," so "non-restrictive — and by the way, it "sits at Fifth and Pine." This information is additional; without it, the sentence still stands. A Tip: Unless we are obviously using which for a different purpose — Which one do you like? — we should always precede it with a comma. When we don't, our reader cannot tell if we are using which restrictively or non-restrictively. Then the firm has to hire grammar experts to decipher our meaning. Fair or not, when we misuse word pairs like these, clients, colleagues and judges wonder if they can trust the rest of our thought processes. The opposite is also true: When we use them correctly, others take note. WWW.ILTANET.ORG 69

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