A tool for clear and vigorous writing: E-prime

I wrote the first version of the following article in 2003. Five years later, having moved on a bit, I found the piece in need of editing, and I rewrote it. As I had done the first time, I wrote the whole piece without once using the verb "to be". And why? You will soon find out. The article examines a very odd writing technique called "eprime", and it asks...

Can eprime make us better writers?

If you've never tried to speak the English language without using the verb "to be" in any of its forms, such as "is" or "am" or "were" or "isn't", you may find it a fun exercise. Those who champion eprime (English "primed" of the verb "to be") say that it helps us express ourselves more clearly and with fewer judgments. These examples show us how.

Examples

"Sarah is a dental hygienist" might become "Sarah cleans teeth from nine to five".
"Your dress is awful" might become "I don't like your dress".
"His taste is dreadful" might become "He and I have different tastes".
"You are wrong" might become "I don't see it that way".
"The reason he was bald is that he was addicted to twirling his hair" might become "He couldn't stop twirling his hair, so he lost it".
"America is number one" might become "We have more debt than anyone else (and more people in jail too)".

Labeling, judging, hurting

In the first example you can see how eprime can help us avoid identifying people with their attributes---in this case, Sarah with her hygienist job. Sarah has many more traits than what she does for a living. What about the farm she lives on and her smile and how she loves to dance? We don't need to box her in by declaring that she "is" a dental hygienist or a young mother or a Texan. We don't need to say that Sarah "is" anything.

In the example about the dress, you see how turning a statement into eprime can bring out the feelings behind a judgment. When I say that "your dress is awful", I seem to talk about YOU but in fact I really talk about ME and what I like. When I share how I feel instead of declaring what you "are", I sound more human. My language becomes less violent.

The first four examples give you a sense of eprime's potential to help us reduce judgmental, violent language. By the way, I should mention that most people spell it "e-prime", with a dash. I prefer "eprime". And see again, by saying what I like or don't like, I have only shared my subjective taste with you. If I had said that "e-prime is an ugly spelling", I would have judged.

Yet eprime does not remove all judgmental language from our speech. Consider this perfect eprime phrase:
"When you criticize the genius of Bourland, you reveal your ignorance." (David Bourland invented eprime.)
This statement has three implicit judgments: "You are criticizing Bourland"; "Bourland was a genius"; "You are profoundly ignorant". The English language gives us many options to judge besides saying "is" or "are".

Ultimately, in order not to express judgment, I can think of no better way than not to judge in the first place. And how do we free ourselves of judgment? I don't want to discuss this here, but I will suggest that perhaps we all have a part of ourselves that does not judge. If we find it, we don't need to do anything.

Style

In the example about the man going bald, you can see how eprime can sharpen a dull sentence. The original version uses "to be" three times in only fourteen words! It shows the "be-creep" that infects much of what we hear and read. It takes more effort to design a sentence with a real subject and an active verb than to glue vague thoughts together with forms of the verb "to be", as in the original version of the bald story. But research shows that the brain's circuits process sentences faster when we tell it who does what, that is, when we make sentences that provide clear subjects and verbs. Therefore, we serve readers better when we leave the "is" glue in our pocket. When we try to prune instances of "is" and "was" from a sentence, we naturally have to remember who does what to whom, and that usually yields precise subjects and verbs, the pillars of a crisp style.

Most writers use a form of "to be" once every ten to twenty words. Though we might not realize it, most of us prefer reading from writers in the twenty-plus range.

Yet one can manage to write some very turgid eprime. See what you make of this perfect eprime phrase:
"Our belief in the supremacy of our reporting objectivity results in our trust of the New York Times's claim to the exhaustiveness of its coverage adequacy".

Terrifying, not? Here you see the work of the main culprit of turgid writing: noun creep. It happens when we replace perfectly usable verbs and adjectives (like "to cover" and "exhaustive") with the nouns derived from them (known as "nominalizations"), in this case "coverage" and "exhaustiveness".
If you translate all the nouns into their original verbs and adjectives, you get something like this: "Because we believe we have the most objective media, we trust the New York Times when it claims to report 'all the news that's fit to print' ".

This sentence does not contain "to be" either. You can write good eprime or bad eprime.
By the way, did you notice the "is" tucked inside the "that's" of "All the news that's fit to print"? How would you translate the powerful slogan into eprime?
I like "All the news we feel like printing". Doesn't that capture it more?

Here you can see how working with eprime may bring out the hidden meaning in advertising, news, business reports and so on. The last example, tongue in cheek, shows how questioning the "is" can reveal funny facts that hide behind phrases we take for granted. By bringing out the who and the what, Eprime can sometimes help us think more clearly.

Silly talk

If you try to use eprime, you will quickly see that the verb "to be" has many uses you may now want to renounce. You may in fact make yourself laugh with some of the language you produce.
For instance, how would you translate "I was born on a Tuesday"?

I cannot think of anything graceful. Certainly I don't want to say "my mother gave birth to me on a Tuesday", even less "I slipped out of my mother on a Tuesday"! In French, they can say "je nacquis" for "I was born", bypassing their own verb "to be". It only so happens that English requires "to be" in order to describe birth. Each language has its quirks.

For my part, I don't want to give up "I was reading", where "to be" gives me access to a tense I enjoy. And I will keep saying that "the Golden Gate Bridge is in San Francisco", or that "Isaac is Jacob's son".

E-Prune

If you insisted on removing all such forms, you would turn eprime into a cult, and you'd find yourself writing prose that would keep hitting rocks instead of flowing. A number of people have proposed using softer versions of eprime to accommodate the "essential" uses of the verb "to be". They have offered a range of names ("E-Choice", "E-Prime Mod" and "V-Prime"), to which I much prefer my own invention, eprune. Who needs to prime when you can prune?

And what does eprune allow you to say? Whatever you like. My little eprune only aims to keep me alert to my possible overuse of "to be". For myself, I can say that I have become a better writer over the years as a result of paying attention to my "is"es and "aren't"s. However, some years ago I went overboard and my writing suffered. The word "I" popped up everywhere, because instead of saying things like "these books are useless", I said things like "I find these books useless!" Yikes! After "be-creep" and "noun creep", I had contracted "I-creep"! And now I sounded like an ego-maniac to boot. When you repress a weed, you boost another.

I went off e-prime, but the pruning reflex stayed, and today I think I have reached a balance I like. I don't think of eprime every time I write, far from it. But, because I spent time playing with it years ago, I have it handy in my writer's toolbox, ready for those heavy-duty sentence repair jobs. So I say "don't worship it, don't shoot it down, just become familiar with it and see if it has something for you".

Smiles,

Andy

Resources

Our discussion board about e-prime for writers.

I love this eprime checker. Paste your text into a box, click submit, and the results page will highlight all your "are"s and "aint"s.

Discovering E-Prime. Of all eprime articles, I like this one the best. A teacher tells how she rediscovered eprime and experimented with it in class. This article disappeared from the web. I will provide this copy until the article reappears on the publisher's site, if it ever does.

Working with E-Prime: A classic article that disappeared from the web.

To Be or Not To Be: Another classic article that disappeared from the web.

I love eprime, I love nonviolent communication, so how excited do I feel when the same article mentions them both? Very.

I agree with many points in a piece called the Top Ten Arguments Against E-Prime. What does that mean for me? Don't take E-prime too seriously, use it to improve your writing.

I haven't read this classic anthology on the subject because I don't have the patience to turn the pages on google books.

DISCUSS IN OUR FORUM or comment below.