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Superb book on writing.
The single most helpful book on writing (nonfiction, mainly) I have read. If you write in Mongolian (or any other language), this will help too. Chapter 1: How to learn from good prose. BChapter 2: How to write in the "classical style." (Pinker will explain what that is.) AChapter 3: "The main cause of incomprehensible prose is the difficulty of imagining what it's like for someone else not to know something that you know." BChapter 4: On syntax. Makes grammar interesting and very helpful. AChap...
Chapter 1 summary: 1. Insist on fresh wording and concrete imagery over familiar verbiage and abstract summary. 2. Pay attention to the readers' vantage point and the target of their gaze. 3. Use the judicious placement of an uncommon word or idiom against a backdrop of simple nouns and verbs. 4. Use parallel syntax. 5. Have an occasional planned surprise. 6. Present a telling detail that obviates an explicit pronouncement. 7. Use meter and sound that resonates with the meaning and mood. Chapter...
I love Pinker, and I love writing, so this really was the book for me. It was denser than I expected, and I thus I wouldn't recommend it for any looking for a light read in writing.The focus is more on academic non-fiction than other forms of non-fiction or fiction, but offers generally timeless advice about style and clarity. Pinker strikes a good balance between useful rules and avoiding pedantry. He occasionally breaks his own advice by overusing his large and eccentric vocabulary, but its al...
It started well. Your brain will finish the rest of that sentence.Or so Steven Pinker explains. The best way to describe this book is as a style guide that relies on neuroscience. Instead of admonishments based on grammar, old rules, and urban myths, Pinker explains the best way to write based on how our brain understand words on a page. Which makes this one of the more readable style guides out there in that it has a purpose instead of just being a list of literary taboos.But the list of taboos...
What up, word nerds! If you find yourself contemplating the finer points of sentence structure, word usage, and punctuation (and especially if you spend time correcting the speech and writing of others), this is the book for you. Steven Pinker is a polymath who writes on language, cognitive psychology and a host of scientific topics: here he applies his erudition and good humor, as well as his experience as Chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, to the topic of clear commu...
I’ve long admired Pinker’s poise with the pen. Both The Blank Slate and The Language Instinct (the two books of his I’d before read) are, in my opinion at least, conspicuously well-written. Popular science is, contrary to what one might expect, a difficult genre; the writer must take complex ideas from esoteric subjects—ideas usually mired in technical terminology—and release them from their provincial prisons. Added to this complicated task of exegesis, the writer of popular science must also w...
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/...Being irrational may pay off, sometimes:https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/...UPDATE THIS IS A LEFT-LEANING, IMPEACHMENT-AT-ANY-COST INTERPRETATION OF THE WRITTEN EXCHANGES TRUMP-ZELENSKY:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/op...UPDATEPinker should be analyzing the little texts ahead UPDATEhttps://getpocket.com/explore/item/th...
Having just embarked on a fairly intensive writing course, I asked my mentor for some recommendations of books on the craft of writing. This book, "The Sense of Style" was at the top of his list, and I can see why.The author, Steven Pinker, is a Psychology professor at Harvard, and has also done much research on language and cognition (he's described as a Cognitive Scientist). Further, he is chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary. And it shows. All of it. He has written a v...
What an enjoyable book. Charles McGrath in the Times: "In general [Pinker] takes the view that if a phrase or construction sounds O.K., it probably is, and that many of the mistakes the purists get so worked up over — using 'like' with a clause, for example — have been made for hundreds of years by writers like Shakespeare." I knew this about Pinker from reading The Language Instinct: he is no purist or prescriptivist of proper English. McGrath feigns surprise and annoyance that Pinker can write...
What I expect from a writing guide is either a comprehensive reference book where I can easily find answers to my questions, or - much more valued - explanations so memorable that my writing - or my students' writing - is changed forever. (Sin Boldly!: Dr. Dave's Guide To Writing The College Paper worked quite well this year; in one case, the shock of reading the Torah was so strong that a student of mine started to write clearly, because he understood that communicating ideas is the key to good...
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 Wo...
I have enjoyed every one of Steven Pinker's books, and this one is no exception. Pinker writes engagingly, with humor, with intelligence, and with authority. He is the chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, so he has useful insights into how the English language is being used in print. As a linguist, he not only knows all the "rules" of writing, he understands the logic (or illogic) behind them. Moreover, he understands which "rules" are real, and which ones were just drea...
* Originally reviewed on the Night Owls Press blog here. *Heads-up, editors. In The Sense of Style, author Steven Pinker challenges every authoritarian grammarian and language purist who has held sway over the rules of the English language with their dogmatic style books. A psycholinguist by profession, Pinker is a scholar of the science of language. So it's no surprise that The Sense of Style feels like a modern alternative to the classic but tired guides of Strunk and White and others. In my d...
The Sense of Style was mandatory reading for me and the rest of my tenth-grade English class. We were so dismayed when this was assigned; I remember thinking, “Great! On top of learning grammar in class, now we have to read about it at home too.” I skimmed The Sense of Style and called it a day. (Which is probably why I never realized this book isn’t about grammar. At least, not entirely.)Years later, I’ve picked this up of my own volition. And I have found Steven Pinker’s style manual to be imm...
I was thoroughly charmed by this well-written guide on how to write better. :) Maybe it's because real language changes. Maybe it's because true clarity comes from the spaces between the words and not absolutely from the rules about the words.But that's not to say that this cogent discussion on grammar isn't rife with practical examples and great reflection, because it does. It just happens to bring up the fact that one generation's Haberdash is another's charming fireside chat. Moreover, it use...
Earthshattering it is not. Some good cartoons, though.
A great book on the considerations for writing non-fiction.This book was written with the amazing style of Pinker's usual writings and it was about that style and practical advice to improve one's writings. I am implementing the lessons I've learned from pinker in my writing process for my blog. And it improved my effectiveness to a great degree. It is worth knowing that most advice on the book contains pretty solid arguments for them. So you can use the arguments to find ways to improve writing...
Steven Pinker has created a writer's guide that is interesting, useful, amusing, and also frustrating.I enjoyed the first part of this book, but the middle section got bogged down in parsing sentences and grammar exercises. I put the book down and took a week-long break from it, and debated whether to pick it up again. I finally did finish, but it was a slog. My big takeaways from this book were 1) language is constantly changing, and the English language is so inventive that when the grammar po...
Thanks to a Goodreads Firstreads giveaway, I had a chance to read an advanced copy of Pinker's Sense of Style. My thoughts on the book are a bit mixed. Here goes:The Good:--Well, let's be honest--I just read a stylebook cover to cover; it must have SOMETHING going for it!--I found Pinker's wit to be on full display here, and that was a welcome addition to what can sometimes become dry material (i.e., talk of grammar). Pinker's wit is at its best when he slyly breaks all the grammar rules he's di...