Re[2]: E-Primer

[Sean O'Donnell-Brown <sodonnell -at- CCMAIL -dot- WIU -dot- BGU -dot- EDU>]

>For example, how else could John Sununu (remember him?) have kept from
>implicating himself or others other than by saying "Some mistakes were made"?

One of the major impetuses of E-prime concerns honesty in communication. Sununu
should not keep from implicating himself and others if he in fact did make
mistakes. He should say something like "President Bush made a mistake when he
hired me. I made a mistake by abusing my power." By saying "Some mistakes were
made," Sununu avoids, as a freshman text I once taught from said, "calling a
spade a space."

>How do you say "The program manager window is now displayed" without going
>into gory detail like "Windows now displays the program manager." This isn't
>so bad once, but I'm doing a step-wise manual for a Windows application, and
>if every other sentence starts like this, I think it would get tedious to
>read. Plus, I think people just don't care what's causing something to
>happen.

With respect to another of the major impetuses of E-prime, the writer/speaker
attempts to avoid presumption. So, the "The program window is now displayed"
message will certainly seem false to the reader when the program hiccups, for
example, and the window does not in fact "become displayed." Though tedious, a
less presumptuous alternative would be something like "If conditions x, y, z,
etc. hold and the program functions properly, you will see the program window."
(Practically speaking, I would personally find it impossible to list all the
relevant conditions. But General Semantics offers us an "out": the
abbreviation/phrase "etc.", another "linguistic device of honest
communication.")

E-prime attempts to break the circle of vagueness, dishonesty, presumption,
etc. that is-full language can often subconsciously perpetrate. Language
generally operates on a subconscious level, confusing "the map" (language) for
"the territory" (the world language attempts to describe). E-prime attempts to
make people on both ends of the communication process conscious of what they
really say when they say X. E-prime has its faults and cannot eliminate
vagueness, dishonesty, presumption, bigotry, etc.--but the more I think about
it, the more I begin to consider E-prime a cautionary step in the right
direction.

Respectfully,

Sean, "The Guy Who Started This E-Prime Thing"
Writer and Editorial Assistant
Curriculum Publications Clearinghouse/NCRVE-MDS
sodonnell -at- ccmail -dot- wiu -dot- bgu -dot- edu

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