Having read 1984, I find the desire to remove undesirable language from our vocabulary quite unnerving.<p>I realise it has the best of intentions, and nobody is proposing to remove &#x27;to be&#x27; from everything. But the discussion here about how adopting E-Prime forces you to rethink what you mean to say, is eerily reminiscent of how Newspeak was used to control people&#x27;s thought process.