Shiny shiny things, and cleaning up my language

[featherynscale]

We picked up our rings yesterday, yay! And, extra special bonus: Both of my rings fit, despite the fact that I forgot which hand I'd ordered the first ring for, and had to guess about which hand to order the second ring for.

With that delightful announcement out of the way, I have a (completely unrelated) challenge for myself:
On our trip back from Denver, I told kittenpants about E-prime, a variant of the English language in which a speaker or writer cannot use any form of 'to be' - no 'is', 'was', 'will be', or related construction has a place. This forces a writer to use an active voice (which also implies that a writer cannot hide the actor in a sentence -- if you need something, you have to say "I need this" rather than "this is needed" and so on). It also clears up some linguistic entanglements and forces a speaker to separate traits/conditions from behaviour (i.e. you can't say "John is an asshole", but you can say "John said rude things to me on the phone again").

I had the habit of speaking and writing in E-prime for quite a while, but have drifted away from it in the last year or two. I find that training myself to think in E-prime has a positive effect on my magical practice (and on the clarity of my communication in general), so it seemed like a good idea to try and go back to it.

So I think that for the next thirty days or so, at least, I will try to use E-prime for all my writing. I find it more difficult to do it speaking, so I will also practice that, but don't want to set a firm goal about it. I trust that you lot will point out where I fail, won't you?

EDIT: I do, of course, except fiction from this challenge, as I have spent enough time polishing that style that I don't want to lose it. I also except Balderdash answers, since apparently people already try to guess the answer by determining which answer they think I wrote, and I hate to make things too easy. :)

EDIT: Thanks to the people who caught me screwing up *my example*. I have gotten so far out of the habit of this that I totally missed it. Sheesh.

Comments

Re: multiple uses of Be

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I do also have an issue with the identity use that you list, but I didn't include it in my set. I don't encounter it as often as I do the predication (I didn't know that word before! Yay learning!) and passive-voice things that annoy or confuse me, but it goes something like this:

E-prime prevents you from saying things like "I am an artist" -- instead, you have to say things like "I make art". In theory, this means that in order to claim the implied 'artist' status, you have to actually 'make art'. An outside observer can't tell if you 'are an artist' or not, but they generally can tell if you 'make art' (because you can show them that). So it adds a dimension of honesty to language.

Other people might have other problems with the identity 'to-be', but I think I only have that one. If I think about it more, I might come up with others.

Re: multiple uses of Be

[fionnabhar.livejournal.com]

While I agree that active is usually a better style choice than passive, I have to say that this has absolutely nothing to do with linking verbs. They are neither active nor passive because the convey no action whatsoever. That's the whole point of having them. They denote condition and relationship, all good things that often need to be communicated.