I don't remember when or how I learned the words "affect," "effect," "impact," and "compact." Maybe I learned them by reading them. Maybe that's why I've never mixed them up, as even native English speakers often do. They are four distinct words. Each can, however, be used as either a noun or a verb, and "compact" is also used as an adjective.
As Nouns...
"Affect" is most often used in psychological or medical writing. It means a patient's or informant's general air, manner, apparent mood, the sort of thing Americans often casually call "attitude." It's not commonly enough used to appear on the first page of a Google search for definitions of "affect," which list the word only as a verb. You're most likely to see references to "his affect" in clinical psychology: "With flat intonation and neutral affect, without eye contact, he said that he believed he was in the hospital because he was the New Messiah and must be tortured for the sins of humankind."
"Effect" is often used in ordinary speech to describe a change or influence someone or something has on someone or something else. "The warm water finally took effect, and the lid came off easily."
"Impact" properly means the effect of things being smashed together. Some editors will allow it to be used in writing to mean the same thing as "effect," so we do sometimes read things like "The teacher's methodical approach had an impact on the students' test scores," but this is wrong. "Impact" can be used metaphorically to mean an effect that was like being smashed into something else, in some way: "In South Dakota Blues, the character John can hardly bear to talk to other men because of the impact childhood bullying had on his personality." More properly, it describes the effects of things like tornadoes and car crashes: "The car's impact on the wall shattered the window."
"Compact" is most often used today, as a noun, to mean a small streamlined object, often a round flat makeup box, sometimes the efficiency model of its kind: "Among new cars, the Honda Civic, Mazda 3, Volkswagen GTI, and Toyota Corolla are the most popular compacts." An older, more formal use of "compact" as a noun was an agreement, like the Mayflower Compact.
As Verbs...
"Affect" is what you're most likely to want to do to another person. It means to influence or change either a person or a thing. "His lack of sleep affected his driving." Often, though not always, people use "affect" when something or someone had a very strong effect on their emotions: "The vegan's passionate speech about factory farms affected everyone's appetite." "To affect" can also describe what you do to a mood or manners you consciously tell yourself to use: "She affected sympathy for his children as a pretext for visiting his country house after his wife died."
"Effect" is what you do to the change itself. To effect a change is to put it into effect: "The CEO ordered RIFs in all departments, the change to be effected by Friday."
"Impact" is most often correctly used in the past tense: "The student's biggest medical expense was his impacted wisdom teeth." It's often used, incorrectly, in places where "affected" or even "effected" might belong, where what it communicates is primarily that the writer wasn't sure whether to use "affected" or "effected": "The drought impacted the price of lettuce." It did no such thing. The price of lettuce was not ground together; it soared. The drought affected the price of lettuce.
"Compact" was sometimes used, in the past, in the sense of "to make a compact": "Passengers on the Mayflower compacted that they would stay together as a group governing themselves according to English laws." It is also used in the sense of "to press things together into a compact size": "She sat on the suitcase, trying to compact all the clothing she wanted to take into one small box."
As an Adjective...
"Compact" is the only one of the four words that is normally used as an adjective: "Small items like lipsticks, needles, and erasers are often grotesquely overpackaged because more compact packaging makes them easy to steal."
"Affected" is sometimes used to describe either a person who puts on an act, or the act the person puts on: "The freshman curled his little finger away from the handle of his coffee mug, called the German teacher 'Herr' Fultz, and referred to the chemistry 'lab-orat'ry' at the University of Nebraska in an affected way."
"Effective" is often used to describe a person or thing that has an effect, nearly always a good effect: "The cleaners applied water, muscle, baking soda and vinegar in such an effective way that the bathrooms sparkled."
Members of this web site have seen "impactful" used as if it were an adjective, but this web site does not accept it as being one. If you want to describe a presentation, try "effective," "impressive," or "memorable."
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