 e-prime (short for english-prime, sometimes denoted Ã or eâ²) is a prescriptive version of the english language that excludes all forms of the verb to be. e-prime does not allow the conjugations of to&nbsp;be&mdash;be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being&mdash; the archaic forms of to&nbsp;be (e.g. art, wast, wert), or the contractions of to&nbsp;be&mdash;'s, 'm, 're (e.g. i'm, he's,  she's, they're). some scholars advocate using e-prime as a device to clarify thinking and strengthen writing.  for example, the sentence "the film was good" could not be expressed under the rules of e-prime, and the speaker might instead say "i liked the film" or "the film made me laugh". the e-prime versions communicate the speaker's experience rather than judgment, making it harder for the writer or reader to confuse opinion with fact. ==history== d. david bourland, jr., who had studied under alfred korzybski, came to the idea of e-prime as an addition to korzybski's general semantics in late 1940s.cullen murphy, "just curious: essays", 1995, isbn , 039570099x p. 78 bourland published the concept in a 1965 essay entitled a linguistic note: writing in e-prime (originally published in the 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
Controlled_English Controlled_natural_languages Forms_of_English General_semantics Literary_techniques Semantics