I was wondering the other day about these two nouns.
Problem:
The basic definitions differ between these two nouns.
Explanation:
The primary meaning of the noun “alternate” is someone who is allowed to substitute for someone else.
The primary meaning of the noun “alternative” is a selection of one of two or more possibilities.
Solution:
Use “alternate” specifically when referring to a substitute person; use “alternative” otherwise.
This is a sign commonly seen around schools.
Problem:
Punctuation is missing.
Explanation:
Whoever first designed this sign did not convert the pause that he heard in his head into punctuation that would express this pause.
This sign is shorthand for “Please slow down or continue to drive slowly because there are children playing in this area.”
Some traffic signs are in the form of an imperative but without the exclamation mark that imperatives traditionally require:
The “SLOW” in “SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY” is short for “Slow Down!” or “Drive Slowly!” and absolutely requires punctuation before “CHILDREN AT PLAY” unless the sign maker wanted to say that the children near where the sign was to be placed were slow.
In other words, “SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY” was meant to carry two thoughts:
This gives us the solutions.
Solutions:
“SLOW DOWN! CHILDREN AT PLAY”
or
“DRIVE SLOWLY! CHILDREN AT PLAY”
I saw this on TV this morning.
Problem:
The noun “affects” is the wrong word for this sentence.
Explanation:
The sentence was displayed on a TV program containing audience members’ reactions to a new movie.
The noun “affect” means emotion or feeling, and “I liked the visual emotions.” would make no sense.
The noun “effect” — as in “special effects” — means in this context an illusory phenomenon.
For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:
This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 788:1, which is very good to excellent.
I also searched Google for “special affects” (with the quotation marks) and got about 59,900 matches. Although some of those seemed to be a play on “special effects” (with the ‘e’) — e.g., for a horse named “Special Affects” — many others (such as this one) seemed to reflect an ignorance of the “affect”-vs.-“effect” distinction.
Solution:
“I liked the visual effects.”