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E-Prime
E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, sometimes É or E′) denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be.
E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms (am, is, are), past tense forms (was, were) along with their negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't), and nonstandard contractions such as ain't and 'twas. E-Prime also excludes contractions such as I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're, there's, here's, where's, when's, why's, how's, who's, what's, and that's.
Some scholars claim that E-Prime can clarify thinking and strengthen writing, while others doubt its utility.
D. David Bourland Jr., who had studied under Alfred Korzybski, devised E-Prime as an addition to Korzybski's general semantics in the late 1940s. Bourland published the concept in a 1965 essay entitled "A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime" (originally published in General Semantics Bulletin). The essay quickly generated controversy within the general semantics field, partly because practitioners of general semantics sometimes saw Bourland as attacking the verb 'to be' as such, and not just certain usages.
Bourland collected and published three volumes of essays in support of his innovation. The first (1991), co-edited by Paul Dennithorne Johnston, bore the title: To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology. For the second, More E-Prime: To Be or Not II, published in 1994, he added a third editor, Jeremy Klein. Bourland and Johnston then edited a third book, E-Prime III: a third anthology, published in 1997.
In English, the verb 'to be' (also known as the copula) has several distinct functions:
Bourland sees specifically the "identity" and "predication" functions as pernicious but advocates the exclusion of all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the "existence" form or the "location" form, terms such as exist, sit or lie could substitute for the copula.
Some ergative verbs may substitute the copula, including taste, feel, smell, sound, grow, hinge, remain, rest, stay, reside, and turn, among others.
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E-Prime
E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, sometimes É or E′) denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be.
E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms (am, is, are), past tense forms (was, were) along with their negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't), and nonstandard contractions such as ain't and 'twas. E-Prime also excludes contractions such as I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're, there's, here's, where's, when's, why's, how's, who's, what's, and that's.
Some scholars claim that E-Prime can clarify thinking and strengthen writing, while others doubt its utility.
D. David Bourland Jr., who had studied under Alfred Korzybski, devised E-Prime as an addition to Korzybski's general semantics in the late 1940s. Bourland published the concept in a 1965 essay entitled "A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime" (originally published in General Semantics Bulletin). The essay quickly generated controversy within the general semantics field, partly because practitioners of general semantics sometimes saw Bourland as attacking the verb 'to be' as such, and not just certain usages.
Bourland collected and published three volumes of essays in support of his innovation. The first (1991), co-edited by Paul Dennithorne Johnston, bore the title: To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology. For the second, More E-Prime: To Be or Not II, published in 1994, he added a third editor, Jeremy Klein. Bourland and Johnston then edited a third book, E-Prime III: a third anthology, published in 1997.
In English, the verb 'to be' (also known as the copula) has several distinct functions:
Bourland sees specifically the "identity" and "predication" functions as pernicious but advocates the exclusion of all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the "existence" form or the "location" form, terms such as exist, sit or lie could substitute for the copula.
Some ergative verbs may substitute the copula, including taste, feel, smell, sound, grow, hinge, remain, rest, stay, reside, and turn, among others.