E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

Post by air » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

shdon wrote: post #73

chippy wrote: post #29

I have spent an entire week writing everything in E-prime. All texts, all IRC chats, all postings, every email. I also spent the following week trying to speak in E-Prime. This proved very difficult but worth it. I had a notepad with me with several useful phrases in it. Even simple things like ordering from a coffee shop made me stumble. But I would try my best to speak in E-prime. I failed several times! Writing ap…

How do you introduce yourself? I find it difficult to find a replacement for: - I'm Steven - Hi, my name is Steven - I'm named|called Steven The only thing I could come up with "Hi, Steven, nice to meet you" sounds rather forced. The grammatical rules of English make it more difficult to use this compared to some other languages. E-prime seems very stinted, especially when asking questions: Is "less objective" really…

Post by jdmichal » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #52

re wrote: post #14

I didn't notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence "[subject] is [concise definition]." For a similar example, the "Pl…

Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn't it? > E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be. Doesn't the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit 'is'? For example E' is supposed to stop me saying things like 'Terminator is a good film and is 2 hours long', but I can say 'Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2 hours'.

Post by jdmichal » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 3:09 PM UTC

nlawalker wrote: post #64

desdiv wrote: post #25

Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English. Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." A verbose E-Prime version would sound something like: "I recall having read an Wikipedia article that reported the height of Mount Everest as almost 8 km." Notice all the extra verbs in there. "Recall"? Could I have mis-recalled? "Read"? Could I have misread? "Reported"? Could Wikipedia have misreported it,…

"Mt. Everest stands 8km tall." In many cases, it's all about moving away from declaring a property of a subject ("X is Y") to using the verb that causes the subject to exhibit the property. I'm familiar with this concept but this is the first time I've heard of it formalized with a name, or used outside of creative/narrative writing. When I was in high school, a writing teacher made my class perform an exercise to me…

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 3:18 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #56

I bemoan rather than beatify prescriptionists who bequeath their own bespoke English upon the world, befuddled when the rest of us find it somewhere between befouling and beleaguering rather than bewitching. Belike I belabor the point; I can begrudgingly believe avoiding "to be" might bestow a little clarity, sometimes. But betwixt you and I, in excess it bewilders me.

Post by mcguire » Mon, Dec 07, 2015, 3:23 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #52

re wrote: post #14

I didn't notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence "[subject] is [concise definition]." For a similar example, the "Pl…

Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn't it? > E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be. Doesn't the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit 'is'? For example E' is supposed to stop me saying things like 'Terminator is a good film and is 2 hours long', but I can say 'Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2 hours'.