Here is a sentence from a video on EngVid (0:32):
Now, we’re going to start with “affect” and “effect”, and the difference being the “a” or the “e”.
What does being mean here?
I know that this word can be used to show a cause, but I don’t see any causal relationship in this sentence.
My second guess is that the teacher uses the whole phase the difference being the “a” or the “e” as a noun (together with affect and effect) or something of the kind, and being is just a regular gerund here.
Answer
In the sentence
Now, we’re going to start with “affect” and “effect”, and the difference being the “a” or the “e”.
the part that starts with ‘and’ is supposed to be a participle clause, but the ‘and‘ interferes with that. Properly constructed, the sentence would be
Now, we’re going to start with “affect” and “effect”, the difference being the “a” or the “e”.
The use of the conjunction ‘and’ makes it a compound sentence with two independent clauses. For the second clause to be independent it needs a predicate (‘difference‘ is the subject). The gerund/participle “being” cannot be the predicate, it’s not a verb. Replace it with “is”, and you get a correct sentence:
Now, we’re going to start with “affect” and “effect”, and the difference is the “a” or the “e”.
Since it’s a video, you need to give the speaker a bit of slack. They may have cue cards to help them, but it’s not uncommon to mistakenly put an ‘and’ or a ‘but’ where it doesn’t belong even while reading.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : athlonusm , Answer Author : Victor Bazarov
