the thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century

He replaces dogma about usage with reason and evidence, allowing writers and editors to apply the guidelines judiciously, rather than robotically, being mindful of what they are designed to accomplish.įilled with examples of great and gruesome prose, Pinker shows us how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right.

In this short, cheerful, and eminently practical book, Pinker shows how writing depends on imagination, empathy, coherence, grammatical knowhow, and an ability to savor and reverse engineer the good prose of others. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. Rethinking the usage guide for the twenty-first century, Pinker doesn't carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. In The Sense of Style, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care? Eye-opening, mind-expanding and cheerful, The Sense of Style shows that good style is part of what it means to be human.A short and entertaining book on the modern art of writing well by New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker This thinking person's guide to good writing shows why style still matters: in communicating effectively, in enhancing the spread of ideas, in earning a reader's trust and, not least, in adding beauty to the world. A guide for the new millennium, writes Steven Pinker, has to be different.ĭrawing on the latest research in linguistics and cognitive science, Steven Pinker replaces the recycled dogma of previous style guides with reason and evidence. Confusing changes in the world with moral decline, every generation believes the kids today are degrading society and taking language with it. They fail to deal with an inescapable fact about language: it changes over time, adapted by millions of writers and speakers to their needs. But most style guides fail to prepare people for the challenges of writing in the 21st century, portraying it as a minefield of grievous errors rather than a form of pleasurable mastery. More than ever before, the currency of our social and cultural lives is the written word, from Twitter and texting to blogs, e-readers and old-fashioned books. What is the secret of good prose? Does writing well even matter in an age of instant communication? Should we care? In this funny, thoughtful book about the modern art of writing, Steven Pinker shows us why we all need a sense of style. Steven Pinker, the best-selling author of The Language Instinct, deploys his gift for explaining big ideas in The Sense of Style - an entertaining writing guide for the 21st century.

The thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century