My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

Useful mnemonics:
acute: children are short, a pain, and not cute for long.
chrOnic = Old (lasting a lOng time).
affect/effect
Affect is a verb and effect is a noun. So you affect something by having an effect
on it. (The exception is if you effect a change; that is, cause a change to happen.)
Useful mnemonic:
RAVEN , that is: R emember A ffect V erb E ffect N oun .
aggravate/annoy
Aggravate  means  ‘to  make  worse’.  Therefore,  while  you  can  aggravate  a
situation, a problem or a condition, you irritate or annoy people.
alternate/alternative
An  alternate  plan  would  be  wrong.  The  verb  alternate  means  going  back  and
forth between two things, and thus you have alternate letters of the alphabet (a,
c, e, g, etc.). If you mean ‘another plan’, it should be alternative .
among/between
Use between for two things; among for more than two.
Between  you  and  me,  there’s  no  way  we  can  divide  these  five  loaves  and  two
fishes among our five thousand guests.