The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century Paperback – September 22, 2015

Steven Pinker’s <I>The Sense of Style</I> fits into the tradition of style guides that began with Fowler and continues up through Bryan Garner. It will inevitably be compared with Willard Stunk and E. B. White’s <I>Elements of Style</I>, that sputnik-era Seussification of grammar and style. But the real comparison is with Joseph Williams’s excellent, but somewhat dated, book <I>Style: Towards Clarity and Grace</I>, one of the first works to blend linguistics and style. Pinker adopts and updates some of Williams’s insights (with all due acknowledgment of course) and connect them even more closely to current research in psycholinguistics and grammar.Chapters 1-3 warm the reader up, with Pinker’s characteristic charm and good humor. In Chapter 1, “Good Writing,” Pinker reverse engineers (as he puts it) several examples of clear exposition, showing the value of simply thinking through what works in writing—strong starts, fresh idioms and diction, occasional playfulness, use of rhythm and meter, attention to the reader’s vantage point.Chapter 2, “A Window on the World,” bring in the work of Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner (in their book <I>Clear and Simple as the Truth</I>) which defines “the classic style.” That is the style which draws its strength from the writer’s helping the reader see the world in a new way. Strong writers show the informed reader with narrative, explanation and examples that meet the readers where they are. That is opposed of course to the academic (and especially post-modern style) and Pinker finds no dearth of examples to illustrate the difference.In Chapter 3, “The Curse of Knowledge,” Pinker explains the problem of specialists who are unable to see the world as their readers see it and thus over-complicate their prose with jargon, nominalizations, abbreviations, unexplained assumptions, and other insider shortcuts.Chapter 4 “The Web, The Tree, and the String” is a long chapter (really, it’s pages 76-138) on syntax. Pinker’s basic point here is that syntax is our tool for putting organization to thought and, moreover, that thinking about sentences as structured entities (modelled by tree diagrams) rather than simple flat strings of words can give us a richer outlook on many problems of style. It’s a fine chapter for linguists, but general readers may struggle a bit here. As more than one readers has noted, here Pinker himself seems to fall victim to the curse of knowledge.Chapter 5 “Arcs of Coherence” is another long chapter (pages 139-186) in which Pinker shows how writers build (or don’t build) coherence in sentences and paragraphs. Coherence involves carefully attending to the reader’s knowledge and to the pattern a writer develops through parallelism, consistency of diction, integration new ideas into ones just introduced, and continual focus on the point of the prose.Chapter 6, “Telling Right from Wrong,” is not so much a chapter as a separate style guide making up about a third of the book. Here Pinker gleefully takes on many the traditional rules and folk rules of English grammar, separating them into broad categories of grammar; quantity, quality and degree; diction; and punctuation. He explains, refines or corrects the traditional takes on grammar, doing so in a way will warm the heart of anyway who has ever been scolded by an ignoramus and capture the interest of the open-minded. Don’t skip the style guide; it’s got some gems on <I>fewer</I> vs. <I>less</i>, restrictive and non-restrictive, fused participles, and the use of commas.<I>The Sense of Style</I> has a few flaws (the curse of knowledge, for one) and it might have been shorter in chapters 4 and 5. But overall it is a fine book, well written and well thought out, by someone who not only cares about language but cares about the facts.

Brilliant. From the author of books on popular Linguistics on the one hand and vast sweeps of intellectual argument on the other, this combines deep linguistic authority with practical necessities. There are five major sections, which get progressively longer. (i) Windows on the World argues for a basic descriptive style as the foundation for all writing, at least non-fiction. If this seems obvious, contrast with so much academic and technical writing. (ii) The Curse of Knowledge is timely in the sense that I’ve seen this described from multiple sources recently. Why do people give such bad directions? Because they assume that the listener has the same worldview infrastructure. (iii) The Web, The Tree, and The String is the most technical. It has the greatest insight (to me) of the whole book. Ideas in our heads take the form of webs of connected ideas (semantic nets or webs). To communicate them we need to convert to a linear sequence of words (the string). The transformations are through trees (parsing). We can see whether our strings are coherent and properly match the webs by reverse engineering the transformation. No one but a linguist would actually go through this process, but it still is both insightful and helpful. (iv) Arcs of Coherence has perhaps the most useful info: While writing starts with outlines and ends with paragraphs, real writing requires a more complex structure. Themes appear and reappear. Conflicts as well. How should they best be structured? (v) Telling Right From Wrong has 120 pages of practical advice.

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven PinkerThe Sense of Style is a scholarly and witty book on the art of writing well. Bestselling author, linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker provides readers with a new writing-guide for the twenty-first century. He breaks down grammar rules and challenges purists on the best use of language. This challenging 368-page book includes the following six chapters: 1. Good Writing, 2. A Window onto the World, 3. The Curse of Knowledge, 4. The Web, the Tree, and the String, 5. Arcs of Coherence, and 6. Telling Right from Wrong.Positives:1. Dr. Pinker consistently produces quality work.2. A "very" unique topic, the art of writing well from a scientific perspective. You don't have to read the book to get my joke.3. Good use of wit that adds panache to a book about writing style.4. Good advice throughout the book. "By replacing dogma about usage with reason and evidence, I hope not just to avoid giving ham-fisted advice but to make the advice that I do give easier to remember than a list of dos and don'ts."5. Explains the three main reasons why style matters.6. Provides insights on how to become a good writer. "Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose."7. Supports good style over writing dogma. "The key to good style, far more than obeying any list of commandments, is to have a clear conception of the make-believe world in which you're pretending to communicate." "The purpose of writing is presentation, and its motive is disinterested truth. It succeeds when it aligns language with the truth, the proof of success being clarity and simplicity."8. The characteristics of classic style. "A writer of classic prose must simulate two experiences: showing the reader something in the world, and engaging her in conversation."9. Provides many examples of what constitutes poor prose: "Metadiscourse, signposting, hedging, apologizing, professional narcissism, clichés, mixed metaphors, metaconcepts, zombie nouns, and unnecessary passives."10. Hanlon's Razor, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Excellent explanation on how the curse of knowledge may lead to poor prose. "The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose."11. Ways on how to improve your prose. "Good prose is never written by a committee." Think about that.12. The importance of understanding syntax. "Finally, an awareness of syntax can help you avoid ambiguous, confusing, and convoluted sentences. All of this awareness depends on a basic grasp of what grammatical categories are, how they differ from functions and meanings, and how they fit into trees."13. Interesting insights on how our minds work and how that knowledge benefits good writing. "English syntax demands subject before object. Human memory demands light before heavy. Human comprehension demands topic before comment and given before new."14. How to construct coherent passages longer than a sentence. "In fact, it's the hunger for coherence that drives the entire process of understanding language."15. Discusses principles of composition. "An important principle in composition is that the amount of verbiage one devotes to a point should not be too far out of line with how central it is to the argument. "16. Discusses good use of grammar, word choice, and punctuation. Starts off by debunking the myth that all traditional rules must be followed for dogma's sake. "That's right: when it comes to correct English, there's no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum. The editors of a dictionary read a lot, keeping their eyes open for new words and senses that are used by many writers in many contexts, and the editors add or change the definitions accordingly. Purists are often offended when they learn that this is how dictionaries are written."17. Presents a list of common usage issues. "These are the ones that repeatedly turn up in style guides, pet-peeve lists, newspaper language columns, irate letters to the editor, and inventories of common errors in student papers." Great stuff.18. Includes notes, glossary and a formal bibliography.Negatives:1. This book is intended for writers, not for laypersons. You must possess good command of the English language and grammar in order for this book to make sense. The grammar jargon will overwhelm the average reader.2. The book's formatting leads to confusion. For a book predicated on clarity, many times I was lost.3. The writing may come across as pretentious.4. I wanted more neuroscience.In summary, there is a direct correlation between the number of stars this book deserves and your expertise on the subject. English majors and writers will give this book either four or five stars. On the other hand, laypersons will struggle with it to say the least. I'm giving this book four stars because even though my engineering brethren balks at reading such a book the avid reader in me recognizes its value. Writers will enjoy this book while the rest will struggle with it.Further recommendations: "The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition" by William Strunk Junior, "On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction" by William Zinsser, "A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)" by Kate L. Turabian, "The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need: A One-Stop Source for Every Writing Assignment" by Susan Thurman and Larry Shea, "Book Writing Mistakes (How To Avoid The Top 12 Mistakes New Business Book Authors Make)" by Jim Edwards, "How to Write Great Blog Posts that Engage Readers (Better Blog Booklets Book 1)" by Steve Scott, "English Grammar For Dummies" by Geraldine Woods, and "Grammar Girl's Punctuation 911: Your Guide to Writing it Right (Quick & Dirty Tips)" by Mignon Fogarty.