The phrase "acted in effect" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to indicate that something has a practical impact or consequence, even if it may not be formally recognized as such.
Example: "Although the policy was not officially implemented, it acted in effect as a deterrent to further violations."
Alternatives: "functioned effectively" or "had the effect of".
And while he listened to suggestions, Mr. Bradley acted in effect as his own campaign manager.
Before the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 it acted, in effect, as America's central bank.
At the same time, the hike in the price of imported energy has acted, in effect, as a tax equivalent of roughly 1percentt of national income.
The assembly only considered legislation that had already been drafted, and local government acted in effect as the transmission belt for decisions made in Belgrade.
And it has been catastrophic for the rest of the euro zone as Germany has acted, in effect, as a drag on demand.
His former firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, you see, allegedly made secret payments to a small group of people who acted, in effect, as Potemkin plaintiffs, allowing the firm to trot them out as clients whenever it wanted to sue a company whose stock had fallen.
In such cases, a municipal prosecutor would act, in effect, as the complainant's lawyer against the local official.
They act, in effect, like caravans holding up road traffic.Air-lockLast summer, the entire country was in chaos.
The magazine is intended to create its own demand, as the hundreds of thousands of copies placed on newsstands and in supermarkets and drugstores act in effect as billboards -- advertisements for themselves, to paraphrase Norman Mailer (a guy perhaps as tough as Dirty Harry).
Borderless roaming is possible because many operators have direct fibre-optic connections between their networks in different countries, allowing them to act, in effect, like a single network.Alessio Ascari, of McKinsey, a consultancy, argues that Africa, rather than India, "is the new battlefield and the new laboratory for development" in telecoms.
To shut the system down, the RIAA may not need to sue all its users, but only the most socially minded ones, who act, in effect, as a kind of centralised server.Such considerations are unlikely to end the file-sharing fad, but they seem sure to change it.
