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Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English. Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." A verbose E-Prime version would sound somethin

by desdiv 11y ago

Sometimes I use E-Prime as sort of a verbose flag for English. Instead of: "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." A verbose E-Prime version would sound something like: "I recall having read an Wikipedia article that reported the height of Mount Everest as almost 8 km." Notice all the extra verbs in there. "Recall"? Could I have mis-recalled? "Read"? Could I have misread? "Reported"? Could Wikipedia have misreported it, intentionally or unintentionally?

chippy 11y ago
"Mount Everest has a height of 8km" Although, I do like your example as it gives a better indication of observer and subjectivity.
- mitchty 11y ago
  Mount Everest measures 8km?
infimum 11y ago
good example, but in an everyday environment couldn't this all be inferred from context? when you say "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." I'll understand that you don't mean literally 8000.00m and that you somehow have gotten that information from some more or less reliable source etc.
Grue3 11y ago
You could say "Mount Everest rises to almost 8km [above sea level]".
- d0gbyt3 11y ago
  No, none of you make a very strong argument, since it reaches nearly 9km in height. (damn this IS hard)
nlawalker 11y ago
"Mt. Everest stands 8km tall." In many cases, it's all about moving away from declaring a property of a subject ("X is Y") to using the verb that causes the subject to exhibit the property. I'm familiar with this concept but this is the first time I've heard of it formalized with a name, or used outside of creative/narrative writing. When I was in high school, a writing teacher made my class perform an exercise to memorize a superset of the "to be" verbs. The rationale was that, while these verbs are direct and objective, they are "flat" and fail to engage a reader. In the case of descriptors/properties that simply require too much wrangling to find an appropriate verb - the case of color came up elsewhere in these comments, as in "the barn is blue" - the guiding rule is that those descriptors shouldn't be the focus of a sentence in the first place. "The barn was blue" is not interesting enough to stand on its own as a sentence and something else needs to take the verb. "The blue barn loomed over the landscape" or "The blue barn dominated his thoughts." Writing a Wikipedia article in this style is certainly an interesting exercise, but given the goal of a Wikipedia article I don't think it's a good fit. An encyclopedia entry is not narrative and needs to be direct and objective. As an aside, her exercise proved to be oddly effective, as I can still recite the list from memory: am, is, are, was, were, have, has, had, be, been, being, do, does, did, can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must. :)
- chippy 11y ago
  Oh, most of those words at the end of your comment are actually allowed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime#Allowed_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime#Allowed_words E-Prime just removes "to be". So you can have other simple words, like can and have :)
- jdmichal 11y ago
  > ... can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must. I wonder what the reason for removing these are. They are basically evidentiality and epistemic markers [0], and don't really mean anything in and of themselves. Then again, perhaps that was the point? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality#Evidentiality_and_epistemic_modality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality#Evidentiality_an...
empath75 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality

by desdiv 11y ago

chippy 11y ago

"Mount Everest has a height of 8km" Although, I do like your example as it gives a better indication of observer and subjectivity.

mitchty 11y ago
Mount Everest measures 8km?

infimum 11y ago

good example, but in an everyday environment couldn't this all be inferred from context? when you say "Mount Everest is almost 8 km tall." I'll understand that you don't mean literally 8000.00m and that you somehow have gotten that information from some more or less reliable source etc.

Grue3 11y ago

You could say "Mount Everest rises to almost 8km [above sea level]".

d0gbyt3 11y ago
No, none of you make a very strong argument, since it reaches nearly 9km in height. (damn this IS hard)

nlawalker 11y ago

"Mt. Everest stands 8km tall." In many cases, it's all about moving away from declaring a property of a subject ("X is Y") to using the verb that causes the subject to exhibit the property. I'm familiar with this concept but this is the first time I've heard of it formalized with a name, or used outside of creative/narrative writing. When I was in high school, a writing teacher made my class perform an exercise to memorize a superset of the "to be" verbs. The rationale was that, while these verbs are direct and objective, they are "flat" and fail to engage a reader. In the case of descriptors/properties that simply require too much wrangling to find an appropriate verb - the case of color came up elsewhere in these comments, as in "the barn is blue" - the guiding rule is that those descriptors shouldn't be the focus of a sentence in the first place. "The barn was blue" is not interesting enough to stand on its own as a sentence and something else needs to take the verb. "The blue barn loomed over the landscape" or "The blue barn dominated his thoughts." Writing a Wikipedia article in this style is certainly an interesting exercise, but given the goal of a Wikipedia article I don't think it's a good fit. An encyclopedia entry is not narrative and needs to be direct and objective. As an aside, her exercise proved to be oddly effective, as I can still recite the list from memory: am, is, are, was, were, have, has, had, be, been, being, do, does, did, can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must. :)

chippy 11y ago
Oh, most of those words at the end of your comment are actually allowed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime#Allowed_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime#Allowed_words E-Prime just removes "to be". So you can have other simple words, like can and have :)
jdmichal 11y ago
> ... can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must. I wonder what the reason for removing these are. They are basically evidentiality and epistemic markers [0], and don't really mean anything in and of themselves. Then again, perhaps that was the point? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality#Evidentiality_and_epistemic_modality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality#Evidentiality_an...

empath75 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality