On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, John Klein wrote: > You probably want to use affect in this case, since policy is a thing > which already exists and will be changed by the assassination. You would > use "effect" if you meant "create a new thing called policy where none > existed before". I suppose it's debatable, though. 'Effect' could also be used as in 'put into effect,' which is a different question -- I had originally read it as 'using assassination to affect (change) the behavior of another government,' but apparently he meant it as an internal thing, like instead of getting voted out, you get, ah, 'voted out.' See also: Lord Vetinari. One man, one vote. pe