RE: E-prime -an interesting article.

From: M. E. Smith (mesmith@rocketmail.com)
Date: Mon Oct 11 1999 - 12:43:49 MDT


--- "M. E. Smith" <mesmith@rocketmail.com> wrote:

> to that sort of thing. For example, this post uses
> E-prime, and I'm sure some of you could dispute at
> least some of what I'm saying.

So I did, and I erred. At least thrice in the post I
used the verb "to be", two in the very sentence above!
Oops! Using E-prime reminds me of driving a car while
playing the accordian; I'll try to do better this
time.

This displays another problem with E-prime; the effort
required exceeds in value the small gain in clarity.
To use an example from the article, the sentence:

"A fetus is a human."

Could easily be translated to E-prime as:

"A fetus has the same rights as a human."

Would E-prime really help much?

=====
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