Talk:E-Prime

What about the temporal meaning "to be" can have, e.g. "Breakfast is at 8 o'clock"?

I think that falls into the category of "location".

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Need more examples. Could you do a passage in journey to the centre of the earth in e-prime? Please reply in E prime.

As our heroes journeyed towards the centre of the earth, they suddenly realized a profound truth: that E-Prime sucks, that E-Prime rapes your mind, murder it, munches it, and spits it out. --[1] :)

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An anonymous user wrote:

CORRECTION: the inventor of E-Prime was a student and follower of Alfred Korzybski, Dr. Bourland.

W. Paul Tabaka http://Korzybski.Org

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Should the article itself be in E-Prime?
The following sentence doesn't seem E-Prime to me, due to the use of are: There are of course different forms of the verb. --romanm 13:37, 21 Nov 2003 (CET)

That's now fixed. I mean, er, I fixed that. --Brion

Fair enough. It was written in E-Prime-Prime, a variant of E-Prime (that I just made up) that omits the pernicious "identity" and "predication" forms but allows the others (in this case, "existence"). —Ashley Y 21:05, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

L. Michael Hall in his Communication magic mentions E-Choice, a variant of E-Prime that seems the same as your E-Prime-Prime. Any knowledge of E-Choice, anybody? Mkoval 20:41, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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The link "Working with E-Prime - http://www.generalsemantics.org/Education/WEPrime.htm " is dead.

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As is the "Intro to E-Prime" link now (http://www.generalsemantics.org/Articles/TOBECRIT.HTM). 63.88.178.130 20:03, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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is it even possible to talk in the third person in e-prime? - plasticlax

Sure, why not? Instead of "He is amazing." one says, "He amazes people." E-Prime merely forces all equations to be reformed to include a context. The subject cannot be ascribed a trait without providing a context that trait comes from. "A is B-like" becomes "A appears B-like to so-and-so.". The E-Prime rules constrain english in such a way as to remove a certain kind of ambiguity. "A = B" by itself includes no context. A and B may both stand as tokens representing some third entity, and may be interchangable in some symbol system. A and B may refer to distinct entities which are functionally equivalent within some specific domain. E-Prime encourages the speaker or writer to include that extra information in the statement.

E-Prime adds redundant information in many cases. For example, I tried to phrase all the sentances in this comment as E-Prime just as an exercise for myself, but the context I added in each case could easily be inferred from nearby text both in and out of my comment. Most readers would probably find a more succinct style easier to read. Appropriately enough, E-Prime's value varies with the context the speaker or writer uses it in.--Crag

ok, but isn't third person always inferring? i mean, when you say "he amazes people," you still are not really providing context. you are assuming the omniscient position of someone like a narrator who simply "knows" what other people think. wouldn't it be more appropriate to eliminate the third person all together and say things like this: "many people have told me that they consider him amazing." to me that is even more honest. i HATE third person. it has no place in honest discussion or scientific inquiry because it pretends that the author is more than some finite being with subjective experiences. anyway, just a little rant. do you know a language (real or artificial) that goes farther than e-prime? - plasticlax

I find it interesting that you would say that, as it strikes me that writing from the NPOV eliminates the omniscient quality from writing. Wikipedia speaks in the third person, but it avoids making point-blank statements about what people think, do, or *cough*are*cough*. Combined with E-Prime, Wikipedia would probably seem even more neutral to the casual reader while increasing clarity in most cases. -Deicidus 06:42, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

Article written in E-Prime considered a violation of npov.

This article about E-Prime being written in E-Prime is cute, but I consider it to be a violation of NPOV. The beliefs of the authors have clearly influenced the article. An article about E-Prime should be about E-Prime, and nothing more. No other purpose. Having the article be written in E-Prime is clearly biased and non-neutral. It attempts to show E-Prime as useful and worthy of advocacy by being an example of it. That an article written *about* E-Prime has been written by E-Prime speakers (therefore advocates?) in E-Prime is not neutral, or consistent with the rest of Wikipedia. Samrolken 09:42, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't entirely see this as an NPOV issue, but I basically agree. Articles should be written in Wikipedia house style, not according to the topic's style. Having part of the article in E-Prime to illustrate its use makes some sense. But not all of it. VV 21:07, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Besides, dictating that the article be written entirely in E-Prime is creating more work for editors (see m:instruction creep). Never sacrifice ease of expansion for... cuteness.

VV's right that a lengthy example of E-Prime would be an excellent illustration of E-Prime. However, I don't suggest keeping one section of the article itself in E-Prime, for the same reason as I cited above (instruction creep). Instead, let's have a two-column, side by side example (see article). • Benc • 21:11, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. People should be allowed to write in any manner they wish as long as it gets the point across, whether this article or any other. If someone happens to write a paragraph without the use of the word "is" where is the proof that they were consciously using E-prime? You want to go in modify it just to put a few "is's" in there because you're paranoid that the contents of paragraph are not objective? Content is what matters ..not the style of writing. RJII 18:48, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This is, after all, en.wikipedia. Not whatever the E-Prime.wikipedia would be called. Hyacinth 02:43, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I consider E-Prime a very useful (but primitive) tool that aids (but doesn't automatically ensures) NPOV writing; and I do want to write wikipedia texts in E-Prime on occasion. Please don't insert extra "is:s" just out of spite. E-Prime should not be enforced on Wikipedia, but it definitely should be allowed; and everyone wanting to write NPOV should consider using it. --anon

Indicating presence?

How would one say they were present somewhere in E-prime? I can't think of any other way of saying "You were there", or "I will be there". Ryan Salisbury 21:43, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"You were there" becomes "You arrived there" or "You stayed there" or "You stood there" etc.

"I will be there" becomes "I will arrive there", etc.

When converting beingness into something else, one can ask oneself questions about that beingness: how does the writer know of it, what caused it, what was going on. E-Prime capitalizes on the idea that "beingness" has no meaning outside some defining context. Something cannot "be" without having some kind of relationship to the universe in which it exists. Rather than merely asserting that something is, E-Prime describes a part of that object's relationship to its universe. Even assertions about abstractions can be re-phrased in terms more specific than simple identity or equality. "A is A" could be re-phrased as "Attempts to deny or subvert an object's identity will lead to frustration." "One plus one is two" could be re-phrased as "The number 'two' represents the quantity composed of the unit value 'one' combined with itself."

This conversion process may result in necessarily verbose re-phrasings, and for that reason I doubt E-Prime will ever be popular in everyday speach or writing. However, E-Prime demands that the writer think carefully about what they mean and whether what they write matches it, which makes E-Prime a useful tool.

--Crag 01:31, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC)

One could also express "One plus one is two" in E-Prime, far less verbosely, as "One plus one equals two".

Right, but then what's the difference between that usage of an identity verb ("equals") and the prohibited "is"? Nothing but irrational OCD. Either avoid "equals" as well (which I do on the rare occasions when I write in E-Prime) or just forget about it.