The Literature Network - To be or not to be: E-Prime as a tool for critical thinking.

To be or not to be: E-Prime as a tool for critical thinking.

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From: ETC.: A Review of General Semantics
Date: 20041201
Author:Bourland, D. David, Jr.

E-Prime! The Fundamentals

AMBROSE BIERCE, in his famous Devil's Dictionary, defined logic as "The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding." As we become conscious of our misunderstandings we improve the quality of our thinking, and most particularly our thinking about thinking, which Richard Paul defines as "critical thinking." In this article I will describe an offshoot of Korzybski's system (18, 19) known as E-Prime: English without any form of the verb to be. The name comes from the equation E' ...

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