Talk:E-Prime

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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.

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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

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)