The E Prime reference article from the Simple Wikipedia on 01-May-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

E Prime

E Prime is English minus the words be, is, are, am, was, or were - the verb to be does not exist. Instead of those words you use become, remain, and equal. E Prime is not Basic English because Basic English takes up all of those words with "be", and invents "bes" for is, "beed" for was, etc..

Simple English does not use these words, and encourages using become, remain, and equal, because they are always more exact and do not have as much bias. But it does not also ban to be, which is fine for words where there is no dispute about meaning.

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