&gt; I feel that it makes my writing sound more repetitive, since I end up replacing &quot;X is&quot; with wordy alternatives like &quot;I find X&quot; or &quot;X seems&quot;<p>In a way, you have found the purpose of E-Prime. While your speech or writing will use more words to avoid use of &quot;to be,&quot; you will actually communicate more since you are describing more instead of simply making a proclamation. Word count will increase, but meaning and information will increase as well.<p>And yes, it did take me a little bit longer to write this comment following the constraint.