Okay, I’m gonna one-up you here: I had a professor ding me on a paper because I used “since” to mean “because” (as in, “Since the author misrepresents Locke’s theory of property, her conclusions fail to persuade” or something like that). He was convinced it could only mean “after.”
As for folks applauding the professor, that’s the worst sort of misunderstanding of language and how it works. There’s absolutely no utility in removing the verb form of “impact” from the language, nor is any such effort remotely likely to work. Hopefully you’ll give up this, and other, quixotic efforts to diminish our tongue.
I’m not a fan of “impact” as a verb, but I wouldn’t correct anyone for using it.
I had a professor who took off points for use of the passive voice. That would have been OK if he knew what the passive voice was but he thought that any form of the verb “to be” indicated usage of the passive voice. It’s difficult to write a history paper without using the words “was” and “were”. Fortunately, he was impressed by the use of fancy words like “albeit” so I peppered my papers with such words to cancel out the ones lost to the passive voice.
Indeed; I adopt a supercilious affect and effect to point out my grammar knowledge to everyone when someone forgets that affect is the verb and effect is the noun.
I had a professor give me a B instead of an A because she insisted that paragraphs had to be four sentences, minimum. It didn’t matter if my sentences were complex and fully addressing the point. She also took off points for “ending with author information,” i.e. a citation. Never mind that the next paragraph responds to the author in great detail.
As mentioned, I emailed the instructor stating that I believe the word impact is appropriate to use as a verb. I included two examples from the media (NY Times and CNN) where it was used in that manner, as well as two dictionary definitions which clearly stated the word may be used as a noun or as a transitive verb; both dictionaries also gave examples.
My instructors response: “These are not academic sources”.
WTF?, I say. A dictionary may not be used a source for word usage?
Is there a such thing as an “academic” dictionary?
I would love to ask her what her source for word usage is, if not a dictionary.
I know it is in my best interest to let this drop, but my fingers SO want to type a response.
mmm
A library (or university) might have the subscription - so you might be able to print out the OED information from a library/university terminal for free
Well, were you using impact instead of affect, simply because you thought it makes you sounds smarter, or that it makes your idea sound more important?
Because that’s really what the problem (often) is. It’s corporate-speak.
Impact as a verb originally implied a physical effect, especially as a result of heavy force. Otherwise, affect is a perfectly usable word, and there was no reason to switch it out with impact. But in corporate circles it became trendy to use impact all the time instead of affect, and then that radiated out to the general population.
Someone who is aware of that history might well be motivated to take off half a percent, out of sheer annoyance.
I’m more weirded out by her taking specific points off for grammatical errors. A paper seems so abstract that grading on a points system doesn’t really make sense to me.
