<story><title>E-Prime: English without the verb &apos;to be&apos;</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>re</author><text>I didn&amp;#x27;t notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence &amp;quot;[subject] is [concise definition].&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;For a similar example, the &amp;quot;Plot Summary&amp;quot; section of the page about &amp;quot;A Void&amp;quot; also conforms to its subject&amp;#x27;s constraint--in that case, avoiding the letter &amp;quot;e&amp;quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;A_Void#Plot_summary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;A_Void#Plot_summary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It surprises me that avoiding forms of &amp;quot;to be&amp;quot; presents such a challenge for me--particularly with this sentence. I feel that it makes my writing sound more repetitive, since I end up replacing &amp;quot;X is&amp;quot; with wordy alternatives like &amp;quot;I find X&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;X seems&amp;quot;; while I&amp;#x27;m used to forms of &amp;quot;to be&amp;quot; appearing dozens of times in a paragraph, my replacements stand out more when overused.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chrisseaton</author><text>Actually the first sentence shows a loop-hole doesn&amp;#x27;t it?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; E-Prime, a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be.&lt;p&gt;Doesn&amp;#x27;t the part parenthesised in commas have a kind of implicit &amp;#x27;is&amp;#x27;?&lt;p&gt;For example E&amp;#x27; is supposed to stop me saying things like &amp;#x27;Terminator is a good film and is 2 hours long&amp;#x27;, but I can say &amp;#x27;Terminator, a good film, lasts for 2 hours&amp;#x27;.</text></comment>
<story><title>E-Prime: English without the verb &apos;to be&apos;</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>re</author><text>I didn&amp;#x27;t notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence &amp;quot;[subject] is [concise definition].&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;For a similar example, the &amp;quot;Plot Summary&amp;quot; section of the page about &amp;quot;A Void&amp;quot; also conforms to its subject&amp;#x27;s constraint--in that case, avoiding the letter &amp;quot;e&amp;quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;A_Void#Plot_summary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;A_Void#Plot_summary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It surprises me that avoiding forms of &amp;quot;to be&amp;quot; presents such a challenge for me--particularly with this sentence. I feel that it makes my writing sound more repetitive, since I end up replacing &amp;quot;X is&amp;quot; with wordy alternatives like &amp;quot;I find X&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;X seems&amp;quot;; while I&amp;#x27;m used to forms of &amp;quot;to be&amp;quot; appearing dozens of times in a paragraph, my replacements stand out more when overused.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>level3</author><text>I haven&amp;#x27;t checked the whole article, but the second paragraph contains the phrase &amp;quot;could not be expressed,&amp;quot; so it doesn&amp;#x27;t completely adhere to E-Prime.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I didn&amp;#x27;t notice earlier while viewing the mobile version of the page, but the Talk page includes a discussion of whether or not to enforce E-Prime.
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Talk:E-Prime&amp;#x2F;Archive_1#Article_written_in_E-Prime_considered_a_violation_of_npov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Talk:E-Prime&amp;#x2F;Archive_1#Article...&lt;/a&gt;.</text></comment>