E-Prime
E-Prime (English Prime) eliminates all forms of “to be” from English: no is, are, was, were, be, been, being. The discipline, developed by D. David Bourland Jr. building on Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics, forces writers to specify what they actually mean.
“The movie is boring” becomes “I found the movie boring” or “The movie bored me.” The first version hides the speaker, presenting a subjective judgment as objective fact. E-Prime makes the speaker visible, makes the judgment explicit. You can’t hide behind “is.”
Korzybski argued that “is” confuses map and territory. “John is a failure” treats failure as an essential property rather than a judgment from a particular perspective. “John failed his exams” says something verifiable. “I consider John’s recent performance unsuccessful” owns the evaluation. The verb “to be” allows us to identify descriptions with things themselves.
The “is of identity” particularly concerned Korzybski. “A rose is a rose” or “Boys will be boys” — these statements use “is” to assert fixed essences. But roses differ, and boys can change. The construction forecloses complexity.
Writing in E-Prime proves surprisingly difficult. The verb “to be” appears in about 25-30% of English sentences. Eliminating it requires recasting thoughts entirely. “There is a problem” becomes “A problem exists” or better, “I notice a problem” or “We face a problem.” Each alternative says something slightly different and more precise.
The difficulty reveals how much “to be” conceals. Writers and speakers use it to avoid specificity, to present opinions as facts, to hide agency. E-Prime makes these moves unavailable. The discipline forces clarity about who thinks, perceives, or claims what.
Critics argue E-Prime goes too far. Some uses of “to be” don’t hide anything problematic. “The meeting is at 3pm” states a fact economically. “The cat is on the mat” describes a relationship clearly. Reformulating every such sentence adds clutter without improving clarity.
The value may lie less in strict adherence than in occasional practice. Write a paragraph in E-Prime and you’ll notice your habits, see where you hide, discover what you actually mean. Use it as a diagnostic tool rather than a rule.
Go Deeper
Books
- Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski (1933) — The foundational work on general semantics. Dense, eccentric, but the source of the “is of identity” critique.
- To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology edited by D. David Bourland Jr. & Paul Dennithorne Johnston — Essays exploring and demonstrating E-Prime.
- Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa — Accessible introduction to general semantics and the relationships between language and reality.
Essays
- “E-Prime” by D. David Bourland Jr. in ETC: A Review of General Semantics (1965) — The original proposal.
- George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (1946) — Related critique of vague, evasive language (though not specifically about “to be”).
Related: [[language]], [[sapir-whorf]], [[constraints]], [[workmanship-of-risk]]