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Review
Praise for The Sense of Style“[The Sense of Style] is more contemporary and comprehensive than “The Elements of Style,” illustrated with comic strips and cartoons and lots of examples of comically bad writing. [Pinker’s] voice is calm, reasonable, benign, and you can easily see why he’s one of Harvard’s most popular lecturers.”—The New York Times “Pinker's linguistical learning…is considerable. His knowledge of grammar is extensive and runs deep. He also takes a scarcely hidden delight in exploding tradition. He describes his own temperament as "both logical and rebellious." Few things give him more pleasure than popping the buttons off what he takes to be stuffed shirts.”—The Wall Street Journal “[W]hile The Sense of Style is very much a practical guide to clear and compelling writing, it’s also far more…. In the end, Pinker’s formula for good writing is pretty basic: write clearly, try to follow the rules most of the time—but only the when they make sense. It’s neither rocket science nor brain surgery. But the wit and insight and clarity he brings to that simple formula is what makes this book such a gem.”—Time.com “Erudite and witty… With its wealth of helpful information and its accessible approach, The Sense of Style is a worthy addition to even the most overburdened shelf of style manuals.”—Shelf Awareness “Forget Strunk and White’s rules—cognitive science is a surer basis for clear and cogent writing, according to this iconoclastic guide from bestselling Harvard psycholinguist Pinker... Every writer can profit from—and every writer can enjoy—Pinker’s analysis of the ways in which skillfully chosen words engage the mind.”—Publishers Weekly (starred) “Yet another how-to book on writing? Indeed, but this is one of the best to come along in many years, a model of intelligent signposting and syntactical comportment…Pinker's vade mecum is a worthy addition to any writer’s library.”—Kirkus Reviews “In this witty and practical book on the art of writing, Pinker applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the crafting of clear, elegant prose: #requiredreading.”—Publishers Weekly, PW pick Fall 2014 Announcements “Who better than a best-selling linguist and cognitive scientist to craft a style guide showing us how to use language more effectively?”—Library Journal “[A] dense, fascinating analysis of the many ways communication can be stymied by word choice, placement, stress, and the like. [Pinker’s] explanations run rich and deep, complemented by lists, cartoons, charts on diagramming sentences, and more.”—Booklist “This book is a graceful and clear smackdown to the notion that English is going to the proverbial dogs. Pinker has written the Strunk & White for a new century while continuing to discourage baseless notions such as that the old slogan should have been ‘Winston tastes good AS a cigarette should.’”—John McWhorter, author of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue and The Power of Babel “Great stuff! Only Steven Pinker could have written this marvelous book, and thank heaven he has. ‘Good writing can flip the way the world is perceived,’ he writes, and The Sense of Style will flip the way you think about good writing. Pinker’s curiosity and delight illuminate every page, and when he says style can make the world a better place, we believe him.” —Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe Is I and, with Stewart Kellerman, Origins of the Specious Praise for The Better Angels of Our Nature"A supremely important book...a masterly achievement."—The New York Times Book Review"Masterly."—The Wall Street Journal"One of the most important books I've read--not just this year, but ever."—Bill GatesPraise for The Stuff of Thought"Packed with information...Clear, witty, attractively written."—The New York Review of Books"A display of fiercely intricate intelligence."—The Times (London)"Engaging and provocative . . . It's good to have a mind as lively and limpid as his bringing the ideas of cognitive science to the public."—Douglas Hofstadter, Los Angeles Times"Curious, inventive, fearless, naughty."—The New York Times Praise for The Blank Slate "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read . . . also highly persuasive."—Time"Ought to be read by anybody who . . . thinks they already know where they stand on the science wars. . . . It could change their minds."—The Economist"Pinker is a star, and the world of science is lucky to have him." —Richard Dawkins — quotes
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About the Author
Steven Pinker is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of many awards for his research, teaching, and books, he has been named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World Today and Foreign Policy's 100 Global Thinkers.
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Product details
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Viking; 1st edition (September 30, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0670025852
ISBN-13: 978-0670025855
Product Dimensions:
5.8 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
347 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#64,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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.
Pleasant, diverting, and I agreed with almost all of his opinions on how to write clearly and well. The description of the book on Amazon makes it clear what it is about, so I am probably about to be unfair. But, I was expecting something much more interesting from the author of the Blank Slate, Better Angels, and several books about language acquisition. If you are already a good writer, this book will only reinforce your opinions about your craft; it will not teach you anything new. By comparison, Pinker's other works were truly enlightening, explaining to the non-specialist how the brain works, or using extensive analysis to demonstrate that the world is getting to be a better place; they really taught me a lot. There is nothing really wrong with this book, but if you are getting it mostly because you liked Pinker's other works, you will probably be disappointed.
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.
This was my first encounter with Steven Pinker's writing: I'd heard enough about him that I thought a writing guide written by him would be to my taste and helpful in improving my sense of good style. I found it wonderfully good. He writes with elegance and command, but at the same time he sounds like a knowledgable friend talking to you about good writing. Where needed he explains the rules of good writing clearly, by analysing what works and what doesn't, and his examples are really well chosen. He's also really good at demolishing the silly rules made up by various self-appointed purists claiming to protect the language from corruption.The books is primarily intended to help what I would call expository writing (papers, technical articles, user manuals, and so on), but it will help anyone who wants to improve their writing. If you write professionally or casually, or even just for personal pleasure, and think there's room for improvement, get this book. You'll find something in it for you.
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