E-Prime

E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime,^[1] sometimes É or E′) denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be.

E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms (am, is, are), past tense forms (was, were) along with their negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't), and nonstandard contractions such as ain't and 'twas. E-Prime also excludes contractions such as I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're, there's, here's, where's, when's, why's, how's, who's, what's, and that's.

Some scholars claim that E-Prime can clarify thinking and strengthen writing,^[2] while others doubt its utility.^[3]

^ Cascini, Gaetano, ed. (2004). TRIZ Future Conference 2004: Florence, 3-5 November 2004. Firenze University Press. ISBN 88-8453-220-5. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
^ Zimmerman, Daniel (Fall 2001). "E-Prime as a Revision Strategy". ETC: A Review of General Semantics 58.3. pp. 340–347. Retrieved 2009-01-10. Using E-Prime, I require students to paraphrase about half their sentences—admittedly, in a special way, but using as stylistic models the best of the rest of their sentences, already written in 'native' E-Prime. The more gracefully and effectively they learn to do this, the more they begin to sound like themselves as writers, rather than like all the other writers around them sound about half the time.
^ French, James D. (1992). "The Top Ten Arguments Against E-Prime". ETC: A Review of General Semantics. 49 (2): 175–179. JSTOR 42582343. Retrieved 4 October 2023.

[1] Cascini, Gaetano, ed. (2004). TRIZ Future Conference 2004: Florence, 3-5 November 2004. Firenze University Press. ISBN 88-8453-220-5. Retrieved 15 June 2017.

[2] Zimmerman, Daniel (Fall 2001). "E-Prime as a Revision Strategy". ETC: A Review of General Semantics 58.3. pp. 340–347. Retrieved 2009-01-10. Using E-Prime, I require students to paraphrase about half their sentences—admittedly, in a special way, but using as stylistic models the best of the rest of their sentences, already written in 'native' E-Prime. The more gracefully and effectively they learn to do this, the more they begin to sound like themselves as writers, rather than like all the other writers around them sound about half the time.

[3] French, James D. (1992). "The Top Ten Arguments Against E-Prime". ETC: A Review of General Semantics. 49 (2): 175–179. JSTOR 42582343. Retrieved 4 October 2023.

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