Have you ever heard of E-Prime? Critical thinkers use it as a tool to write, speak and think more clearly and accurately. Learn how you can use it to sharpen your critical thinking abilities, avoid mental traps and become a better thinker.
An E-Prime Primer
The term E-Prime (short for English Prime) refers to a dialect that completely removes the verb ‘to be’ in all its forms from the English language.
It turns out that the use of the verb to be alone may respond for a great deal of faulty reasoning we commonly find. Intentionally or not, people tend to abuse that verb, perpetuating a way of thinking that hinders proper critical thinking.
E-Prime helps bring awareness to how we use language and how it impacts thinking. It serves as a practical starting point for a less dogmatic way of thinking, and it goes much further than merely finding word substitutions for the missing ‘to be’s.
Now, consider for a minute how much you use the verb to be. Eliminating it from language means you can’t say sentences such as “The sky is blue”, “John is smart” or even the simplest “I’m hungry”. In fact, by my own reckoning, I estimate that about half of the phrases we say contain to be in some form.
Although we can easily reword “I’m hungry” as “I feel hungry”, in many cases the E-Prime conversion shows itself far from trivial. Before jumping right into using E-Prime, we must ponder the reasons to learn it and the benefits we may gain from not using the verb to be. Why bother with E-Prime at all?
9 Ways E-Prime Can Help You Become a Better Thinker
1. It Exposes Opinions Disguised as Facts
Consider “Beethoven is the best composer ever”, or “This is a stupid idea”. These sentences illustrate how we express opinions as if they represented established facts. Getting rid of to be helps us remember that much of what we say represents, as a matter of fact, just opinions. Consider the E-Prime alternatives for those sentences: “I like Beethoven’s compositions best”, and “I utterly dislike this idea!”.
2. It Promotes Higher Accuracy and Exposes Hidden Assumptions
Refraining from using the verb to be may require you provide much more detail than usual. For instance, when rewording “Jack is smart”, you could end up with “Jack scored 140 on his IQ test” or maybe “Jack earns money without working” — depending on your definition of ’smart’. E-Prime encourages you to detail ambiguous words (such as ’smart’), helping expose any hidden assumptions behind them.
3. It Reveals the (Fallible) Observer
Consider the statement “The Earth is round”. Notice how the verb to be carries with it an intellectual momentum of completeness, finality, and time-independence. It sounds like an absolute, immutable truth, doesn’t it? Yes, it does… exactly like the statement “The Earth is flat” just a few hundred years ago.
The alternative E-Prime construct “The Earth looks round” shows that an observer exists — an observer that simply perceives the Earth as round — and that this observer may have flaws in perception. E-Prime brings back a certain ‘humbleness’ in language, getting rid of the “God Mode” in speech and reminding us we make mistakes.
4. It Avoids Premature Judging and Labeling
E-Prime discourages abstractions that lead to labeling and prejudice. Contrast “Mary is Christian” with “Mary believes in the existence of Christ”. While these two sentences have the same meaning, the E-prime version avoids any prejudices associated with the label ‘Christian’.
As a side note, labeling happens not only when dealing with other people, but with ourselves. If you find yourself saying “I’m a pig!”, try the E-Prime “I eat like a pig”, or, going further, “I ate twice as much as I usually do at dinner”.
5. It Brings the Role Players Back
When using E-Prime, you’ll soon notice that using passive voice can get very hard. Although this looks limiting at first, I can tell that you’ll hardly miss passive voice once you get used to it.
When you can’t resort to uncompromising statements such as “Mistakes were made”, you’ll have to rephrase it as, say, “Steve made a mistake”. Or, if you really don’t know (or don’t want to expose) the doer, you could use “Someone in this room made a mistake”. This latter statement still rises as a superior alternative to the former, since at least you explicitly point out that exists a doer behind the action.
6. It Makes Language More Colorful
Before using it, I believed that E-Prime would make language more convoluted, duller and less personal.
Granted, your language may suffer if you have just taken your first steps in E-Prime (like me). However, with a little bit of practice, you’ll notice that E-Prime provides an excellent opportunity for a much more vibrant and vigorous way of writing. (Or do you think I didn’t consider the verb to be before choosing provides in the previous sentence?)
E-Prime promotes not only richer verb diversity but also improvements in style, too. If forced to rewrite common sentences such as “Sarah is wealthy”, one can come up with many stylistically superior variations instead, such as “Sarah possesses many riches”.
7. It Stimulates Debate
“You’re wrong”! In E-Prime, this easily turns into “I don’t see it that way”. This style of communication immediately opens the possibility for debate, without the need to overturn the other person’s statements first. Declarations such as “I liked the movie” invite healthy discussion and the sharing of different opinions — much more enticingly than the usual “The movie was good”.
In E-Prime, we deal with perceptions, not absolute truths. And perceptions never override each other, and thus can never clash.
8. It Improves Creativity
E-Prime can also help in the realm of creativity and problem solving. Firstly, it dissolves notions such as “There is no solution!”, turning them into superior choices such as “I haven’t found any solutions (yet)”.
More than that, E-Prime helps you overcome generalizations and get to the facts more objectively, enabling you to find solutions initially overlooked. After some E-Prime reframing, “The customer is stupid!” could become “The customer won’t buy our product even though it costs less”. The latter makes a much better starting point for coming up with solutions than the former.
9. It Exercises Your Brain
If for nothing else, try E-Prime for an excellent brain workout! Trust me, you’ll never know how challenging it gets if you don’t try it. Learning E-Prime feels exactly like learning a new language, except that instead of learning new constructs, you must ‘unlearn’ part of what you already know. It will fire up your neurons!
Parting Words
Before I finish this, let me say that E-Prime does not come without its imperfections. Many people expressed valid criticism, which I agree with in many ways.
Granted, E-Prime does not immunize you from falling into the traps of thinking I described. You can still state opinions as facts in E-Prime. You can still lie, deceive and express prejudice. Worse yet, you can still continue using to be implicitly, hiding the actual words but keeping it in spirit.
Also, for many people, E-Prime goes too far in eliminating to be altogether. In fact, many instances of to be don’t present any problems. For that reason, some have decided to adopt ‘lighter’ versions of E-Prime that allow some particular usages of to be.
For me, E-Prime symbolizes more a way of thinking than a mere grammar restriction. Its main goal consists of bringing a higher awareness on how language affects our thoughts — and not of enforcing a strict, blind limitation to language. It has more to do with developing new habits of thinking than with adhering to it rigidly.
Although I don’t plan to abandon regular English in favor of E-Prime, I still believe that everyone can benefit from trying it, if only for a while. Make a short trial and see for yourself how it affects your thinking and your awareness of your and other people’s language.
Additional Resources
I barely scratched the surface when it comes to E-Prime. If you want to get practical tips on forming sentences in E-Prime, or if you want to understand E-Prime implications more deeply, the Internet has many resources for you. Let me point out some of the best I’ve found:
- Wikipedia E-Prime Page. As usual, Wikipedia makes a great starting point for research. Contains several links to jumpstart your E-Prime quest.
- E-Prime Tutorial. This tutorial shows extensive practical tips on how to actually write in E-Prime.
- Working with E-Prime: Some Practical Notes. Article by David Bourland, Jr., the creator of E-Prime (website no longer available, found via The Internet Archive.)
- E-Prime: The Spirit and the Letter. Discussion about the ’spirit’ of E-Prime, contrasting the strict E-Prime usage with just using its concepts in a not-so-radical way.
- The E-Primer. Online tool to check texts for “E-Primeness”. Highlights all instances of the verb to be in your text.
What Do You Think?
This article comes as my first attempt to publish an article in E-Prime. As I took my first steps in E-Prime only a couple of weeks ago, let me know if the article sounds too awkward. Thank you!
P.S.: How about leaving your comments in E-Prime?
I found your article fascinating. I had never heard of E-prime before. I had heard of some of the advantages you listed when I learned about active vs passive voice, but this goes beyond that. I enjoyed seeing how changing the structure of the language could change the thinking. I definitely want to look into the concept further. This comment took me more than my usual time to write because I took you up on your challenge. I checked it in the E-primer a few times and made modifications before I hit submit!
Luciano, E-Prime is certainly an eye-opener. These are some initial thoughts I’m having, nothing complete.
This approach will probably improve one’s writing, but presents a pesky challenge existentially. It’s ironic that “to be” is taken out, while so much of humanity’s challenges come from too much “to do.” In my line, I help people move from DOING to BEING. Or as someone said recently: “The longest journey you will ever take is the 18 inches from your head to your heart.”
Again, I see value in this approach, especially in writing & some in one’s personal orientation. I have to say though, that much of the turn-arounds mentioned already happen with language adjustments accompanying, if you’re living a heart-based life.
For instance, making “I” statements in debate or charged situations takes blame & finger-pointing sting out of the equation. Practicing non-judgment is inherently inclusive. In healing we don’t label because medicine does that already, reducing the person to the disease.
Bottomline for me is that if you’re making holistic inner adjustments, language and orientation emerge from that, rather than an intellectual process that starts from a verbal level and goes in.
Lots to discuss here. It’s certainly stimulating!
Pamir: Wonderful discernment here. I’ve played with ePrime some twelve years now, as both teacher and student. However coincidentally, I began suffering from double (chronic, moderate+) depression concurrent with that beginning. I struggle constantly to be at the de-emphasis of to do. Luciano stresses, or perhaps I infer, though, that intentionality has much to do with it as does lingual choice: selecting states, choosing degrees, stopping to analyze and make deliberate choices. You, then, add the ‘chicken-and-egg’ of a heart-based life, the link between these two, and causality (possible). Thanks, man, for stirring it up. Between considering the both of these, I can’t help but exit this day more healthy, more conscious of my decisions and the control I can exert over my own action, more aware of others and my need to make choices that deliberately exhibit love.
This is the first time I have heard of E-Prime – it sounds very interesting….please forgive me if these comments are non-E-Prime!
I’ll use Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be” as a reminder when I write in future.
Thanks for the great post.
Paul: you should check the seminal ePrime primer; I think it’s called “To Be or Not; An ePrime Anthology,” and it features the work of novelists, biographers, scientists.
Hi Luciano,
You posted MANY good points and I will see how else I can apply this. Thanks Luciano – you always have tons of WONDERFUL resources on how to better our MINDS!
This is the first time I have heard of e-prime and to me it makes a LOT of sense. I learned from Slade, of Shift Your Spirits to use the word “Feel” and haven’t looked back since.
Love,
Jenny
Hi Luciano
Wow, this is a fantastic post. I never heard of E-Prime but I’m always reading up on emotional intelligence. I understood the meaning of sentence structure when engaging in meaningful conversations to build rapport.
Your post puts a new spin and insight to that.
Great article Luciano,
This article draws attention to the close relationship between the words we use and our thought patterns. Making the changes required to adopt E-Prime would actually change the way we think. To bring clarity to our speech, we first need to get clear in our head. This is way deeper than a simple shift in our choice of words. Language is the articulation of thought. We’re talking major reprogramming here!
A brilliant article Luciano!
I remember in English class doing exercises to train us to express ourselves more concisely and precisely, however we didn’t call it “E-Prime”!
Thanks everybody for the comments!
@Beth Robinson: Glad you accepted the challenge of writing your comment in E-Prime! It feels awkward at first, I know!
@Pamir: Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree that if we change internally, that will naturally reflect on the language we use. But going the other way and changing the language first can also bring awareness and help our deeper internal changes, don’t you think? For me, this works like a two-way street.
I, like you, favor being from doing, but I believe that getting rid of ‘to be’ may actually help in discussing the issue of being. When you can’t hide behind the verb to be, you feel, you believe, you transform yourself into, you perceive yourself as, and so on. In short, you make the whole discussion richer!
@Paul Foreman: You just invented a great catch phrase for E-Prime! I will adopt it, too!
@Jonathan: I also firmly believe that language shapes our thoughts. Write for some time using E-Prime and you’ll see that it indeed means major reprogramming, as you say.
Hi Luciano
Thank you for writing a succint article on e-prime. And in e-prime too. I have explored e-prine in my attempts to communicate with more clarity. I sensed that some of the ways I structured my language, both the words and the grammar, impacted on the meaning I created.
I had heard that some languages don’t use the verb “to be” and they experience living more in the present moment and recognise the changing nature of our existance more easily. This means that they do not see people as one thing or another but as doing one thing or another at this point in time. This seems much more realistic and forgiving to me. I have written about this on these two blogs:
http://transformativeliving.wo.....he-moment/
http://transformativeliving.wo.....-for-life/
Love to hear how they speak to you…
I really liked this article. I think that one can only really appreciate E-prime by trying it out. I must admit that while I read your article I spent most of my time tyring to see if I could catch you out slipping in the “to be” verb – I think you succeeded in leaving it out all the way through!
One question: Does E-prime have more effect on the writer or on the reader? I think myself that it has more effect on the writer – in fact if the writer shows enough skill, the reader may not even realise that the article omits “to be”. But does that mean that they fall under some sort of subconscious influence?
Example #1 gives “Beethoven is the composer I like best”
Doesn’t this violate E-prime
Wow, this is really cool concept and technique. Very intriguing. Clearly it needs some practice to implement though, it’s not too obvious to me yet.
I first heard of E-Prime from the late, great Robert Anton Wilson. (Or would it be more E-Primey of me to say “Robert Anton Wilson, whom I find great.”)
Thanks for this article which I very much enjoyed. I’ll consider doing more writing in E-Prime in the future.
To me a rule that focus on effects rather than causes will likely yield unintended consequences that defy the very reason of such rule, for nature always finds its way, and human-nature doubly so.
People won’t stop mistaking opinions for facts just because they lack the language to do it; they’ll just find other ways. By trying to eliminate the obvious forms of opinions-disguised-as-facts, E-Prime may very well make it harder to spot such problems. It complicates the expression of valid ideas faster then it eliminates those problems. Any language powerful enough to allow the expression of sophisticated ideas will have this kind of problems. But I do appreciate some of the aspects of E-Prime, for I believe that Creativity thrives before scarcity and restriction (necessity nurtures inventiveness, they say). In this way, E-Prime offers a good mental challenge that forces one to think in creative ways – but so does poetry, music, mathematics, and even perhaps writing exclusively in passive voice.
Wow, I feel overwhelmed by the amount of great comments! (overwhelmed in a good way, I mean)
@leona: I enjoy very much how your posts expand on the use of E-Prime, putting it as only one piece in the larger puzzle of non-violent communication. Thanks for sharing them!
@Mark Forster: I am quite intrigued by your question! I don’t have a definitive answer, but in my view it affects both.
First, it does affect the writer: it puts him under a mental discipline that changes his way of expressing himself.
As for the reader, I believe he also gets influenced. For one aspect, he will become conscious of author’s opinions more easily, bringing him more freedom to disagree or put in his own opinions.
Also, as a nice side-effect, E-Prime encourages a more personal and active way of expression (“I believe”, “I like”). That alone can create a more engaging piece, connecting writer and reader more easily and deeply.
@Nathan: Great catch! I changed it in the article to “I like Beethoven’s compositions best”. Thanks for your astuteness and for letting me know!
@Duff: Glad to have you here, I read and enjoy your blog very much!
I didn’t know about Robert Anton Wilson, but I became very interested in his work since yesterday. My Twitter friend Catus Lee mentioned Robert’s book Quantum Psychology — which I immediately became interested in.
For those interested, I managed to find Robert’s website, and an online version of his book’s chapter about E-Prime.
@Thales: Thanks for sharing your opinions — I always find them very, very insightful!
I wholeheartedly agree with what you say. That’s why I believe we must use E-Prime as a tool for raising awareness, and not just as an imposed, artificial restriction to language. For me, E-prime’s usefulness lies in the fact that it can help build the mental discipline required for critical thinking.
So, indeed, I also believe that E-Prime, when used as an end, can cause more harm than good.
Hello!
I´ve never heard about E-Prime before. I just finished reading this article and felt that I´ve grown a lot. Thanks for sharing this with us… I just think that I´ll have to improve my english before applying this. Better than that, I will do it simultaneously.
“The customer won’t buy our product even though it costs less”.
“Won’t” = “Will not.”
You have used the future tense of the verb “to be.”
I caught this because when I first tried using E-Prime about 37 years ago I realized that it prevents one from making assertions about the future: since we don’t know what the future holds, E-Prime thus forces the user to be circumspect – surely a good thing. E-Prime users can discuss intention and probability, etc., but cannot make (foolish) predictions.
Good article, though. Thanks.
Baloney on stilts. See? I avoided the linking verb quite nicely. Ixnay on the earth-squareay.
“Will” works as a modal verb, not as the future of “to be”.
If “will” represented the future of “to be”, then one wouldn’t say “I’ll be happy when this day ends”, one would simply say “I’ll happy when this day ends”. However, one doesn’t, ergo, “will” doesn’t represent the future of “to be”.
BTW, did you notice how E-Prime makes it hard to talk meta-language? But apparently it doesn’t make that impossible.
I have never heard of E-Prime before. From the title, I thought you were going to try to sell me some sort of software. I like the creativity behind this process and think it provides an opportunity to express more authentic thought.
I heard about E-prime a couple of years ago and really like the concept. Your 9 point list helps me to clarify the reasons why I find it appealing.
There are times when I consciously write using E-prime and I always find that awareness extremely helpful in identifying my assumptions, opinions and generally taking greater responsibility for my words. More often I forget about it – and I have certainty anyone reading my blog will find many instances of ‘to be’. Old habits die hard!
After your post, I have renewed intention to use it more often! Thank you
I use to be far too much, mainly in present or past continuous as in “I am doing” or “I was doing” especially in my writing.
I will take up this challenge and for the rest of March I will attempt to write my blog posts without to be – even if I don’t succeed I will learn a lot, for certain!
@Alex Fayle: If you indeed suffer from a ‘to be’ addiction you’ll feel challenged for sure! I really enjoyed pursuing E-Prime because, I didn’t end up becoming a grammar Nazi (as some might expect), but became immensely more conscious of my own language.
As for your trial, I recommend you print a copy of the E-Prime Tutorial and keep it handy for the first few days.
Good luck!
Do you ever tried in other languages e.g. Italian or Portuguese?
Do you think that there will be no difference?
Incidentally I’ve found an intersting article about e-prime:
http://www.ctlow.ca/E-Prime/E-Prime.html
I tried the concept in Portuguese and it works exactly the same as in English. (In Portuguese, to encompass all the meaning of the English ‘to be’, we need to get rid of two verbs — ’ser’, and the time-bound ‘estar’).
In Italian, the verb ‘essere’ has an exact match for ‘to be’, so it should work the same as well.
However, I strongly believe that not every language has such a clear mapping in translation. For those languages, you would need much more care in order to get the same benefits of E-Prime.
Can other foreign language readers please confirm? Thanks!
My first thought as I began reading this article: “I utterly dislike this idea!” But I chose to persist in reading. By the time I finished reading, I found myself intrigued by the entire concept… enough to pursue the idea farther.
Thanks for writing it.
Hi,
I just wanted to say that I feel you have made a very good job of your first attempt to write in E-prime.
I find the article fascinating and intend to explore the links to further my knowledge and use of E-prime. I like to think of myself as a thoughtful person and surely anything that helps to sharpen critical thinking skills, while also helping to expose fallacies, cannot be anything but extremely useful.
Thanks for the post
Interesting. I tend to use passive voice more than active. I might give it a try. Thanks for the article.
I think E-Prime thinking is islamic, in a sense that it discourage a person from saying something as if he all-knowing. The All-Knowing is God Al-Mighty only.
Moderation in all things.
Seriously?? Would you please get me the red shirt.
What color shirt did you want?
I want the shirt that is red
And somehow you think that “I want the shirt that you think is red”
Or how about, I want the shirt that you think that I will think is red” is better logically or linguistically.
If you do the research you will come to the conclusion that baring ocular deficits, almost everyone has the same idea of red. Color concepts are wired into the brain (See synesthesia for evidence of this), so unless there is more than one shirt closer to red than anything else, there will exist a vanishingly small possibility of someone bringing back the wrong shirt in response to a request for a red shirt.
My take on this is that people need to be aware of the fact that absolute obedience to rules, no matter how good they are, and no matter how well crafted, is one of the features of mindless cult followers. Such obedience may be appropriate in a few, usually technical areas, but I will go with the idea that life, in general, and language in particular is to complex to have any aspect of it rigidly codified.
This idea might get more traction if its promoters limited it to the removal of “to be” when speaking of identity, as in X is a Y, and possibly one or two of the other cases. In particular unless there exists a well known standard I would advise against using to be as an adjective. If I say John is tall, well most people would be surprised if they could not see his head above most others in a crowd. If I say that he is good, or competent, than, of course, I would be just bullshiting, since there is no generally accepted standard for good, or competent.
Doug:
I don’t really understand the purpose of your comment. “Please get me the red shirt” obeys the e-prime rules. But neither “I want the shirt that you think is red” nor “I want the shirt that you think that I will think is red” make e-prime sentences, so why would promoters of e-prime think them better logically or linguistically?
A great post! Having examined some of the logical fallacies arising from misuse of the verb “to be” (e.g., God is love; love exists; therefore, God exists), I found perceptive the following quotation from the 1933 book by Alfred Korzybski entitled “An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics”:
“The verb “to be” has at least four entirely different uses: 1) as an auxiliary verb, “Smith is coming”, 2) as the ‘is’ of predication, “the apple is red”, 3) as the ‘is’ of “existence”, “I am”, and 4) as the ‘is’ of identify, “the apple is a fruit”. The fact that four semantically entirely different words should have one sound and spelling appears as a genuine tragedy of the race…”
I’ve heard that the Hebrew language and at least one oriental language don’t possess a similar “tragedy”. Does anyone know for sure?
I don’t know about Hebrew or any oriental language. In Portuguese (which is my native language), two verbs encompass the meaning of the English ‘to be’:
1. The verb ’ser’, which acts as a “time-unbound” version, like “I am human” (have always been and will continue to be);
2. The verb ‘estar’, which acts as a “time-bound” version, like “I am hungry” (now).
Having said that, this distinction doesn’t help much clearing the confusion.
I am also still interested in hearing more from speakers of other languages!
Although Hebrew does have a verb “lihyot” (to be), if you want to say, for instance, “The book is big,” you’d say “HaSefer godol” – literally, “The book big.” The noun “sefer” is prefixed with the definite article “ha”; the adjective “godol” is uninflected. “Sefer godol” means “a big book”; “hasefer hagodol” means “the big book.” Generally tenses are expressed by inflecting verbs, but if you want to say, “I was there,” you’d use “hayiti” – “I was.”
David.
Thank you, but…!
1. I don’t see how you used “lihyot” in your examples – or is “yiti” a past tense of “lihyot”?
2. Does “lihyot” have four different meanings as does “to be” (i.e, for existence, identity, predication, and as an auxiliary verb)?
“Hayiti” means “I was”; “haya” means “he (or it) was…” The “Ha” here is not the definite article prefix – it’s part of the radical, the root of the verb (typically a Hebrew verb root consists of three consonants, but there are countless exceptions), “iti” being an inflection, a suffix, if you like, indicating first person singular past: “ra’iti, for instance, means “I saw” or “I was seeing” – there’s essentially only one past tense in Hebrew. The verbs conjugate without auxilliaries – the future is expressed with prefixes, the past with suffixes, and the vowels seem to change with infuriating irregularity, thus: “ani” (I) “rakaditi” (danced); “ani roked” (I danced); “ani erkod” (“I shall dance”).
“Ani moreh” means “I am a teacher” – no verb “to be” – just a pronoun and a noun. “Hayiti moreh” means “I was/have been a teacher…” “Ani ayef” means “I am tired” – pronoun and adjective….
I’m really not an expert. The examples I’ve given were just random, and there are obviously subtleties like the passive and the reflexive. Sorry I don’t have time or expertise to tell more.
David,
Thank you for the time you’ve already donated. If you could spare just a little more time, please answer the following three questions, stated with just a little introduction.
1. In English, to express one’s existence, we can say either “I am” or “I exist”. Are there similarly two (confusing!) ways to express existence in Hebrew?
2. In English, to express equality (or identity), we can either use the verb “to be” and say (e.g.) “I am as tall as he is” or avoid “to be” and say something similar to “We have equivalent heights”. Are there similarly two options in Hebrew?
3. In English, to describe an attribute (predication), we can either use the verb “to be” and say (e.g.) “You are handsome” or avoid “to be” and say something similar to “You have handsome features”. Are there similarly two options in Hebrew?
By the way, if David is too busy to respond and if anyone else knows the answer to those questions, please respond. In addition, if someone knows an oriental language (such as Chinese, Japanese,…), I’d be grateful if you’d provide similar information. Asked differently, the question is: is it only the languages derived from Latin that are so screwed up (“a genuine tragedy of the race”)?
Wow this concept is totally new to me! I’ve never even come across
the term e-prime before but I will certainly going to give it a go!
Thanks Luciano!
(I think that was e-primed!)