&gt; Unlike the article, I didn&#x27;t try to use either form in my comment. :)<p>I&#x27;ll give it a shot. This proved harder than I thought it would, and might read awkwardly. (Especially the &quot;actually called &#x27;E-Prime&#x27;&quot; part. I can&#x27;t think of a way of rewording that that doesn&#x27;t sound weird.)<p>---<p>In High School, my English teacher had us write essays in a format that incorporated these rules, but I had no idea that it had a name: &quot;E-Prime&quot;. In addition to not using forms of &quot;to be,&quot; we followed the SEXI format. This meant we composed every body paragraph from four parts: Statement, Explanation, eXample, and Interpretation (one web site lists this as Importance). I think that in short essays each SEXI paragraph also couldn&#x27;t number more than four sentences.<p>The combination of E-Prime and SEXI created a real challenge to write at first, but with practice I found that it led to really solid papers with greater clarity of thought. It tremendously helped in writing my college senior thesis.