I've been advised to offer some advice that they're going to ignore in their post frenzies. I only hope that I can affect a positive change with this post, though in the past I've had a negative effect whenever I post in a thread.
Given the already pedantic nature of the topic, I figure I'd chime in with some of my own.
To be fair, "affect a positive change" is grammatically and semantically sound. You may, in fact, be changing the nature of a pre-existing (but not specific) positive change.
It's
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/affect
Given the already pedantic nature of the topic, I figure I'd chime in with some of my own.
Though this was unlikely the intended meaning. :P