思考与写作en.wikipedia.org
E-Prime：不用动词 'to be' 的英语
E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'
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导读
E-Prime 是英语的一种变体，主张在写作和表达中完全避免使用动词 'to be'（is、are、was 等各种形式），以减少把观点伪装成事实、把主观判断绝对化的倾向。这个维基百科条目介绍了它的规则、来源（源自 D. David Bourland Jr. 对普通语义学的延伸）以及支持与批评的观点。
为什么经久不衰：它把一个语言习惯问题变成思维训练：迫使你区分事实与判断、更精确地选词，这种反思对写作和思考至今仍有价值。
HN 评论精选
指出条目本身就用 E-Prime 写成，并吐槽实际执行起来很别扭
我起初没注意到，但这个维基条目的编辑们自己也遵守了 E-Prime 约束——条目本身就是用 E-Prime 写的。回头检查时，只有开头一句显得特别不自然，因为几乎所有条目都以'[主题]是[定义]'开头。类似地，小说《消失》的维基页面情节梗概也避开了字母 e。让我惊讶的是，避开 to be 竟这么难——我觉得这让文字显得更啰嗦，因为我不得不用'我发现 X''X 似乎'这类冗长替代，而它们被过度使用时反而更扎眼。
re查看英文原文
I didn't notice at first, but, like with some other Wikipedia articles, the editors of this one have enforced the E-Prime constraint on the article itself. After the possibility occurred to me and I went back to the page to check, I only found it particularly unnatural in the initial sentence, since almost every other article begins with the sentence "[subject] is [concise definition]." For a similar example, the "Plot Summary" section of the page about "A Void" also conforms to its subject's constraint--in that case, avoiding the letter "e": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void#Plot_summary It surprises me that avoiding forms of "to be" presents such a challenge for me--particularly with this sentence. I feel that it makes my writing sound more repetitive, since I end up replacing "X is" with wordy alternatives like "I find X" or "X seems"; while I'm used to forms of "to be" appearing dozens of times in a paragraph, my replacements stand out more when overused.
亲身实践一周的体验：写作容易、口语极难，但值得尝试
我花了一整周用 E-Prime 写所有东西——所有文本、IRC 聊天、帖子、邮件。之后又花一周尝试用 E-Prime 说话，这非常难但值得，我随身带着记满常用短语的记事本，连在咖啡店点单都会卡壳，失败了好几次。写作则容易得多，它让邮件和帖子更主观、更相对。我认为'非暴力沟通'与 E-Prime 有很多相似之处。Robert Anton Wilson 写过一篇很好的入门介绍，推荐大家看看。
chippy查看英文原文
I have spent an entire week writing everything in E-prime. All texts, all IRC chats, all postings, every email. I also spent the following week trying to speak in E-Prime. This proved very difficult but worth it. I had a notepad with me with several useful phrases in it. Even simple things like ordering from a coffee shop made me stumble. But I would try my best to speak in E-prime. I failed several times! Writing appeared much much easier. It made emails and other postings less personal, less objective and more subjective and relative. I believe "Non Violent Communication" has many similarities to E-Prime. Robert Anton Wilson wrote a very good introductory text explaining E-Prime. http://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm I suggest you all check it out!
E-Prime 可作为给陈述附加信息来源与不确定性提示的'详细模式'
有时我把 E-Prime 当作英语的'详细模式'开关。比如不说'珠穆朗玛峰高约 8 公里'，而说'我记得读过一篇维基文章，报道珠峰高度接近 8 公里'。注意其中多出来的动词：'记得'——我可能记错了？'读过'——我可能读错了？'报道'——维基会不会（有意或无意地）报错了？
desdiv查看英文原文
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?
把它当作思维练习而非教条，练完再按需恢复
我认为应该把它当作一种练习而非写作风格。你不必在写作中消灭所有 to be，但思考如何做到这一点会迫使你更仔细地选词，掌握之后可以再把 to be 加回来。你也可以对副词和介词短语做同样的练习；编程中也有类似练习——消灭所有赋值语句，看看代码会怎么组织，再按需加回来。
nostrademons查看英文原文
One of my school's founders gave an essay-writing workshop when we applied to colleges, and told me about this when critiquing my essay. IMHO, you should think of it as a good exercise instead of a writing style. You don't need to eliminate all forms of "to be" in your writing. However, thinking about how you would do so forces you to choose your words more carefully. You can add "to be" back in later once you've mastered E-prime. You may want to try the same thing with adverbs and prepositional phrases. Eliminate them, and see how it affects your writing. Then reintroduce them only if they make your writing more clear. In programming, you can perform similar exercises with mutation. Eliminate all assignment statements, and see how you structure your code in their absence. Then add them back as necessary.
反驳核心主张：不用 to be 照样能把观点伪装成事实
维基说'使用 E-Prime 使作者或读者更难把观点陈述与事实陈述混淆'——这句话本身就是一句伪装成事实的观点，却完全符合 E-Prime 规范。任何有高中英语水平的人都能造出反例，比如：'E-Prime 使我无法把价值判断表达为事实陈述，证明我比你们这些还在用标准英语的无知野蛮人优越。'不需要 to be 也能把观点包装成事实。
patio11查看英文原文
Quoth the Wiki (quite accurately tagged [citation needed]): Using E-Prime makes it harder for a writer or reader to confuse statements of opinion with statements of fact. The above statement is an opinion dressed up as a fact which is nonetheless compatible with E-Prime. (Do you need a [citation needed] to mark self-negating statements?) Anyone with a high school command of the English language can conjure up their own alternatives. Here are three examples. Oops, scratch that: I present three examples below. * E-prime renders me incapable of expressing a value judgment as a statement of fact, proving my superiority over you ignorant savages still using standard English. * Anyone who cannot write a statement of fact in e-prime lacks sufficient proficiency in English to find their way out of a paper bag. * Some people believe that e-prime decreases conflict, but I prefer the traditional route: wholesale slaughter of those who disagree with me. Why? Because one does not need "to be" to bathe in the blood of English professors who (pre-humously) possessed far too much free time.
从跨语言视角看：to be 的系动词用法是印欧语系的特有现象
很多语言没有这个动词也运转良好，比如我的母语泰米尔语；俄语好像也没有，比如'你叫什么名字'是 'kak vas zovut'；普通话的'是'只覆盖 to be 的部分用法（表身份但不表谓语描述）。我深挖了一下，发现印欧语系的一个共同特征就是都有对应英语 to be 的系动词。
randomwalker查看英文原文
Many languages get along just fine without that verb, such as my native language, Tamil. I learnt a tiny bit of Russian a long time ago, and -- someone correct me if I'm wrong -- I don't think Russian has it either. For instance, "what is your name?" is "kak vas zovut?" Also, Mandarin has shi which can be used in some senses of "to be" llsted in the article but not others; for instance, identity but not predication. So I dug a little deeper and found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_copula "A feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb to be." I'm a bit of a language nerd, so this is very interesting.
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