E-prime is appearantly is a way of speaking or writing that abolishes the use of the verb form “to be” in an attempt to clarify language and help eliminate some forms of irrational thinking. Here is an example taken from a website
lA. The electron is a wave.
lB. The electron appears as a wave when measured with instrument-l.
2A. The electron is a particle.
2B. The electron appears as a particle when measured with instrument-2.
The above sentences illustrate how imprecise language can lead to an appearant contradiction.
Alfred Korzybski was the originator of general semantics of which e-prime might be considered a subset.
I am not a great or even good writer. I did take a college level course in English in the 80’s but I don’t remember much about it (for a number of unfortunate reasons ) I wonder though, is the subject “semantics” covered in collegiate English courses?
I can understand not asserting that something “is”, if there are different ways of viewing the situation. I guess the writer is asserting that there is always another way of looking at it. But if the stuff in my Ehrlenmeyer turns red, it’s only going to raise serious questions if I write in my paper,“The stuff in the flask then appeared to turn bright red.” “Appeared” seems (see, I’m uncertain) to imply uncertainty. What if I’m certain? How could I mistake the color “bright red” given normal lab lighting, normal vision, etc. Surely we can be sure of some things. Or sure enough. I don’t know. I may be missing the point.
You might be. Using your example, you wouldn’t write, “The stuff is
red,” you’d write, “the stuff turned red.” The latter sentence doesn’t
use the verb “to be”. If you say, “it turned red,” that implies that it
was a different color earlier than it is now. Whereas, “It is red,”
doesn’t tell you anything about a change of state. It could have
been red forever, for all the reader knows. So, your example is
actually just another situation where you would not want to use
“to be”.
If I’m getting the hang of this, we could go further with Cynth’s example and point out the differences in the use of the word “appeared”. The stuff appeared as blue, but then changed to red. - the difference is between talking about something’s appearance (noun) versus it appeared to change (verb).
I think we’re focusing too much on the word “appears”, which is
particular to Monster’s example because of the properties of
subatomic particles. “to be” is what we’re trying to get rid of, but
you don’t have to replace it with “appears” everytime.
I can’t believe I used that sentence for an example. What a dope! How about this though, “That dress is red.” Is there any reason it would be better to say “That dress appears red.”? I think actually many of the E-prime wordings are better because we do tend to confuse our opinions with the truth, and that wording forces one to realize that a point of view is involved. I just can’t imagine using it for everything. I guess I’d have to read a science paper to see how well it worked for that purpose. But don’t find one for me, please!!
When I read over the examples on the website, many do just seem like common sense wording to express doubt. I guess my question is do those people feel there is never a time of certainty? Might I not be absolutely sure that something was true?
Oh, I just read in the addendum to the article that its exponents are not advocating that E-Prime be used on all occasions. It appears not such a big deal after all. It appears an academic analysis of how to make accurate statements which would often require some indication of uncertainty.
We had this kind of thing in Physics and Chemistry at school. We had to be conscious of our role as (possibly influenced) observers, and reduce the influence whenever we detected it.
But you get the same kind of linguistic requirement in the Armed forces.
Try Judging Distances
Yeah, I prefer succinctness most of the time. In this case, e-prime
might prefer something like “In this light, that dress looks tomato red”
(leaving the possibility that in another light, it might look bergundy).
Most sentences contain context that is obvious to most people and
wouldn’t have to be stated with such precision. I could see it being
useful in scientific writing because some scientists are such experts,
they forget what their audience doesn’t know. So, in this case a paper
will seem too precise to another expert in the field, but might be just
right for a scientist whose expertise lies elsewhere.
This particular example (from the website) amuses me:
10A. The fetus is a person.
10B. In my system of metaphysics, I classify the fetus as a person.
For consistency, this would be have to be applied to every
statement with any modicum of social context… No absolutes, baby:
Regular: “Hitler was a bad man.”
E-Prime: “According to my American upbringing, and from the point
of view of the Western countries which were the victors of WWII,
and therefore wrote the history books, Hitler was a bad man.”
I think my problem is that I think there are some things, such as the wickedness of Hitler, that are true. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. He doesn’t just seem wrong to me, he is wrong. If we always have to refer to everything in some relative way, then things sort of start falling apart for me.
Again, I think the points those guys make are worth thinking about, but probably many of us endeavor to speak that way anyhow when we are voicing an opinion that sane people could disagree with----I know, people would disagree about what sanity is . The examples given about Beethoven were good. And I would sacrifice succinctness if a more accurate statement could be made.
) I wonder though, is the subject “semantics” covered in collegiate English courses?
I can’t believe I used that sentence for an example. What a dope! How about this though, “That dress is red.” Is there any reason it would be better to say “That dress appears red.”? I think actually many of the E-prime wordings are better because we do tend to confuse our opinions with the truth, and that wording forces one to realize that a point of view is involved. I just can’t imagine using it for everything. I guess I’d have to read a science paper to see how well it worked for that purpose. But don’t find one for me, please!!