Meaning of the word "affect"

Solution 1:

oerkelens deserve credit for this answer.

They are both examples of spelling mistakes.

Consider the sources.

1- Congress decided only to soften it affect by creating SSIA.

From Stars and Stripes, a military news outlet that claims editorial independence even when it comes from inside of the US Department of Defense.

2- powerful burst of wind from the base of a thunderstorm, which causes similar affects to a tornado.

This one comes from the tabloid, the Daily Mail, the second largest UK paper.

Far from a cesspool of misprints, they are still not models of rigorous editorial management. It can easily happen, particularly in online publications. What is strange is that they have not fixed it yet.

And look at the sentences.

The easiest way to check if these are misspelling mistakes is to replace "affect" with "effect" and see if they maintain or improve their meaning, or else.

1- For a little more context for the first sentence:

"The SBP-DIC offset is very unpopular but also costly to eliminate. Congress decided only to soften it [affect/effect] by creating SSIA."

Synthesis: The SSIA lessens the impact of the "very unpopular" SBP-DIC's offset.

With the added context, the word "affect" makes even less sense. In fact that is not the only mistake. The editors should have replaced "it" with "its." It would have said, "Congress decided only to soften its effect by creating..." And that makes sense.

2- Pinpointing the mistake in the second example is easier after retrieving the entire sentence, which is an explanation of a microburst.

A microburst is a small but powerful burst of wind from the base of a thunderstorm, which causes similar [affects/effects] to a tornado.

Simply, the sentence wanted to compare the impact (effects) of a microburst to that of a tornado.

Affects and effects are extremely similar words that are often related in meaning and context too. That helps explain why they are commonly mistaken. But it requires a sharp eye and careful reading to catch them, particularly when in newspapers since the reading is often in a hurry and fragmented (reading parts here and there).