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Hello to Jim, Bonnie and the others who would like to discuss E-Prime...
I sure do!
E-Prime is a system of English semantics developed in the 1930's (?)
which omits ALL uses of the verb "to be." I teach this to my students as
a way of getting them to stop using the passive voice...which requires
some form of the very "to be." E-Prime also creates a more interesting
and precise piece of writing. I have handouts, examples, and audio tape
of one "expert" who SPEAKS in E-Prime....try that on sometime.
One example I used in a recent training workshop:
She is smart. (what does this mean?)
E-Prime will push us to tell the truth:
She scored over 1450 on her SAT exam.
or
She marries only very rich men.
More on this later....gotta rush back to paper grading errrrgh.
