E-Prime

E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, sometimes denoted É or E′) refers to a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb "to be", including all conjugations, contractions and archaic forms.
Some scholars advocate using E-Prime as a device to clarify thinking and strengthen writing. A number of other scholars have criticized E-Prime's utility.
History.
D. David Bourland Jr., who had studied under Alfred Korzybski, devised E-Prime as an addition to Korzybski's general semantics in the late 1940s. Bourland published the concept in a 1965 essay entitled "A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime" (originally published in "General Semantics Bulletin"). The essay quickly generated controversy within the general semantics field, partly because practitioners of general semantics sometimes saw Bourland as attacking the verb "to be" as such, and not just certain usages.
Bourland collected and published three volumes of essays in support of his innovation. The first (1991), co-edited by Paul Dennithorne Johnston, bore the title: "To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology".
For the second, "More E-Prime: To Be or Not II", published in 1994, he added a third editor, Jeremy Klein. Bourland and Johnston then edited a third book, "E-Prime III: a third anthology", published in 1997.
Different functions of "to be".
In the English language, the verb 'to be' (also known as the "copula") has several distinct functions:
Bourland sees specifically the "identity" and "predication" functions as pernicious, but advocates eliminating all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the "existence" form (and less idiomatically, the "location" form), one might (for example) simply substitute the verb "exists". Other copula-substitutes in English include "taste", "feel", "smell", "sound", "grow", "remain", "stay", and "turn", among others a user of E-prime might use instead of "to be".
Examples.
Words not used in E-prime include: be, being, been, am, is, isn't, are, aren't, was, wasn't, were, and weren't.
Contractions formed from a pronoun and a form of "to be" are also not used, including: I'm, you're, we're, they're, he's, she's, it's, there's, here's, where's, how's, what's, who's, and that's. E-Prime also prohibits contractions of "to be" found in nonstandard dialects of English, such as "ain't".
Rationale.
Bourland and other advocates also suggest that use of E-Prime leads to a less dogmatic style of language that reduces the possibility of misunderstanding or conflict.
Kellogg and Bourland describe misuse of the verb "to be" as creating a "deity mode of speech", allowing "even the most ignorant to transform their opinions magically into god-like pronouncements on the nature of things".
Psychological effects.
While teaching at the University of Florida, Alfred Korzybski counseled his students to eliminate the infinitive and verb forms of "to be" from their vocabulary, whereas a second group continued to use "I am," "You are," "They are" statements as usual. For example, instead of saying, "I am depressed," a student was asked to eliminate that emotionally primed verb and to say something else, such as, "I feel depressed when ..." or "I tend to make myself depressed about ..."
Korzybski observed improvement "of one full letter grade" by "students who did not generalize by using that infinitive".
Albert Ellis advocated the use of E-Prime when discussing psychological distress to encourage framing these experiences as temporary (see also Solution focused brief therapy) and to encourage a sense of agency by specifying the subject of statements. According to Ellis, rational emotive behavior therapy "has favored E-Prime more than any other form of psychotherapy and I think it is still the only form of therapy that has some of its main books written in E-Prime". However, Ellis did not always use E-Prime because he believed it interferes with readability.
Criticisms.
Many authors have questioned E-Prime's effectiveness at improving readability and reducing prejudice (Lakoff, 1992; Murphy, 1992; Parkinson, 1992; Kenyon, 1992; French, 1992, 1993; Lohrey, 1993). These authors observed that a communication under the copula ban can remain extremely unclear and imply prejudice, while losing important speech patterns, such as identities and identification. Further, prejudices and judgments that are made are more difficult to notice or refute. James D. French, a computer programmer at the University of California, Berkeley, summarized ten arguments against E-Prime (in the context of general semantics) as follows:
According to an article (written in E-Prime and advocating a role for E-Prime in ESL and EFL programs) published by the Office of English Language Programs of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the State Department of the United States, "Requiring students to avoid the verb to be on every assignment would deter students from developing other fundamental skills of fluent writing."