Editing E-Prime (section)

==Psychological effects==

While teaching at the [[University of Florida]], [[Alfred Korzybski]] counseled his students to
<blockquote>eliminate the infinitive and verb forms of "to be" from their vocabulary, whereas a second group continued to use "I am," "You are," "They are" statements as usual. For example, instead of saying, "I am depressed," a student was asked to eliminate that emotionally primed verb and to say something else, such as, "I feel depressed when ..." or "I tend to make myself depressed about ..."<ref name="Ellis 2010">{{cite book |last=Ellis |first=Albert | author-link=Albert Ellis |title=Albert Ellis: Evolution of a Revolution |publisher=Barricade Books |year=2010}}</ref></blockquote>

Korzybski observed improvement "of one full letter grade" by "students who did not generalize by using that infinitive".<ref name="Ellis 2010"/>

[[Albert Ellis]] advocated the use of E-Prime when discussing psychological distress to encourage framing these experiences as temporary (see also [[Solution focused brief therapy]]) and to encourage a sense of agency by specifying the subject of statements.<ref name="EllisFeeling2">{{cite book |last=Ellis |first=Albert | author-link=Albert Ellis  |title=Feeling Better, Getting Better, Staying Better: Profound Self-Help Therapy |publisher=Impact Publishers |year=2001 |page=2 |isbn=9781886230354 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wLtw0YB8ZBsC&pg=PA2}}</ref> According to Ellis, [[rational emotive behavior therapy]] "has favored E-Prime more than any other form of psychotherapy and I think it is still the only form of therapy that has some of its main books written in E-Prime".<ref>{{cite book | last=Ellis |first=Albert | author-link=Albert Ellis | editor1-last=Ellis |editor1-first=Albert | editor2-last=Blau | editor2-first=Shaun | title=The Albert Ellis Reader: A Guide to Well-Being Using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy | publisher=Citadel Press | year=1998 | page=312 | isbn=978-0-8065-2032-2 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LorJYkPSQOwC | access-date=12 April 2017}}</ref> However, Ellis did not always use E-Prime because he believed it interferes with readability.<ref name="EllisFeeling2"/>