[JoshTriplett]

> When I was in high school we couldn't use the verb "to be" in assignments for English class. No is, am, are, was, were, has been, will be, etc.

> Of course this is overly restrictive, but 80-90% of the time there was a better way to phrase the sentence if you thought about removing the "be" verb. 10% of the time it was awkward, which sucked.

I do the same thing, habitually, as a tool to improve my writing, inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime .