Double Bass E-Prime Challenge

[Huy Nguyen]

I was thinking about e-prime all yesterday and it seems like a really great idea. I used to be disappointed in much of my writing for reports and things for school as they seemed so mundane. Couldn't figured it out back then but may it has to do with abusing "to be"?

I think I'll take the challenge on at in the writing for at minimum. Maybe then writing won't be so boring as I have to cut to the point and force myself to be more colorful. I know there will be more difficulty in trying to avoid it when it comes to conversation but I guess I'll do it up until the point where it gets overly cumbersome. Good stuff.

 

[petesenkowski]

In my office, everyone wrote engineering reports in passive voice. The corporation issued a style manual, which included recommending active voice for all communication. Duly inspired, I wrote my next report using active voice and submitted it for review. My boss returned it with his comments: he changed virtually every sentence to use passive voice. "Things are done" in the corporate engineering world, but apparently nobody does them.

 

[Marc Piane]

I've been fascinated the whole field of general semantics for some time. I find very interesting the influence linguistic patterns and constraints can have on our thinking.

 

[MR PC]

Brevity is a powerful tool. I think it's a good idea to develop an ability to recognize another persons conscious use of, whether it's in speech or action.