“Impactful” is a heinous travesty of the language. I’ve actually seen “impactfulness” used too. Also bad is “impacts” … “the stock market has suffered several impacts due to low business confidence.” This cumbersome wording tries to amp up the drama. It’s much cleaner to say “The stock market has been affected by low business confidence.” Aside from the shock value of replacing “affected” with impacted, a metaphor for bodily collision, many have turned to impacted because the subtle difference between affected and effected intimidates them.
Be the better person. Avoid the hokey metaphor.
Btw, media uses “slammed” and “pounds” and other Batman words simply because they get more clicks than rebuked or chastized. Don’t be a headline writer.
If media can say “slammed” to mean “said something about”, I can use “impacted” to mean “affected”. Especially when we have the word “impactful”.
Didn’t mean to imply you can’t, I was just curious about the formal rules for the word.
And it seems “impacted” can be used in the sense of “affected”.
I am confused :)
“Impactful” is a heinous travesty of the language. I’ve actually seen “impactfulness” used too. Also bad is “impacts” … “the stock market has suffered several impacts due to low business confidence.” This cumbersome wording tries to amp up the drama. It’s much cleaner to say “The stock market has been affected by low business confidence.” Aside from the shock value of replacing “affected” with impacted, a metaphor for bodily collision, many have turned to impacted because the subtle difference between affected and effected intimidates them.
Be the better person. Avoid the hokey metaphor.
Btw, media uses “slammed” and “pounds” and other Batman words simply because they get more clicks than rebuked or chastized. Don’t be a headline writer.
Impactfullted.
“impacts” has been in my vocabulary for as long as I remember, and it’s common to use it that way. The dictionaries even have that definition.
I’m not afraid of language evolving.