John Walkup

Technical writing has long interested me. When I taught physics at Cal Poly, Melody DeMeritt (a member of the English Department faculty) and I co-facilitated a writing workshop as part of the university’s WinGED (Writing in General Education) program.  I not sure who, but someone introduced me to the writing method E-Prime during the workshop. I forgot about E-Prime for the next few years, but picked up the method again roughly two years ago. I am glad I did.

The E-Prime writing method involves recasting sentences to remove all forms of the verb “to be.”  (I have boldfaced and colored red such verbs throughout this blog entry.) Verbs of the form “to be” point to the concept of existence, but dynamic writing typically targets more meaningful actions.

I consider E-Prime challenging, but I think such efforts produce cleaner prose. The process of transforming a passage into E-Prime often forces the writer to re-evaluate his or her position, often to substantial benefit.

Let me demonstrate the process using a passage from an article Gerlinde Olvera* and I recently submitted to a research journal for publication. First, we start with the original passage:

I note two instances of the verb form “to be.”  The verb “is” dominates the first sentence over the action verb “facilitate,” an unfortunate construction. I can recast the first sentence by propelling the main verb “facilitate” to a more prominent position, eliminating “is” altogether.

I love the directness of this sentence, but it contains an ambiguity: Teachers mainly facilitate… as opposed to what?  Or should we interpret the sentence as “Teachers mainly facilitate Level-3 activities…” as opposed to Level-2 activities? In other words, should we consider the verb “facilitate” or the direct object “Level-3 activities” the focus of the sentence? (Note that the original sentence contained this flaw as well.) Let’s try to clarify our position:

Although longer than the original sentence (by roughly one word), our result contains more information.

Now we can consider the second sentence, where I have inserted one of my own proofreading comments in parentheses:

The first problem centers on the verb “expected.” Although stronger than verbs of the form “to be,” the verb “expected” relates to a passive educational process. As teachers, we do not merely “expect” students to think in certain ways; we “guide” or “teach” them.

Students are guided by whom?  The teacher? The school? Here, appearance of the verb “are” points to a passive construction and, therefore, begs for recasting into E-Prime.

Since both sentences begin with the same subject “teacher,” we can simplify the second equation using the pronoun “they”:

Looks good to me! The result removes considerable ambiguity and saves space–a win-win situation. The reader may object that the last instance of the word “them” could refer to the subject “teachers” or the direct object “students,” but to me the sentence reads just fine.

Those seeking help with this writing method should consider visiting the Wiki Encyclopedia entry and the links at the bottom of the page.

Oh, if you think you can offer suggestions for improving my prose or simply want to comment on my efforts, please do so.

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* Gerlinde analyzes curricular materials and contributes to our knowledge base (especially in regards to English language learners and 21st Century Skills) here at The Standards Company LLC.