The Sense of Style

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century Hardcover – September 30, 2014

Author: Visit Amazon’s Steven Pinker Page | ISBN: 0670025852

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The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century – September 30, 2014

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• Hardcover: 368 pages


• Publisher: Viking Adult (September 30, 2014)


• Language: English


• ISBN-10: 0670025852


• ISBN-13: 978-0670025855


• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches


• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)


• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  
  • #1 in Books > Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Reference
  
  
  • #1 in Books > Reference > Writing, Research & Publishing Guides > Writing > Writing Skills
  
  
  • #1 in Books > Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Grammar
  
  

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 days as an English undergrad, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style was the biblical tome of writing. But Pinker arrives with this iconoclastic book to show us that sometimes rules can be tone-deaf to what really makes for transparent and compelling prose.

Purists often forget that the English language is rife with idiosyncrasies that can’t be fit so neatly into rule boxes. You’ll see the best kind of rule-breaking among poets and novelists, who often have the better “ear” and feel for language than your clumsy grammarian. Language is chiefly a medium for expression, not just an embodiment of rules. Literature’s most gifted writers have often ‘broken’ the rules using constructions that might have been edited into sterility by heavy-handed editors. The expressive possibilities of language often rely on the rules being bent.

As you can see, this book isn’t your typical manual on grammar and usage. You won’t find a list of dos and don’ts in an effort to indoctrinate. Pinker shows us instead that unthinking adherence to manuals actually makes for bad, clunky writing. For example, one of the signature rules in writing is to avoid using the passive voice at all costs. But Pinker argues that if you change every passive sentence into an active one, you’re not necessarily improving the prose.

I like Steven Pinker a lot and his "Better Angels of our Nature" was one of the best books I’ve ever read. It is a tribute to his writing ability that that book kept me hooked until the very end. So I awaited this book eagerly and got it on the first day it was available. To my great disappointment, I found it hard to finish.

The first problem is organization…the book really doesn’t lend itself to the purpose of being a style guide, because you can’t thumb through it to find a relevant topic. It’s mainly a book of dense prose. There are no headings, no bullets, no lists, and precious little white space.

The second problem is that the book is crammed with grammar jargon that’s never defined, except maybe in the glossary at the back. Unless his goal was to exclude all non-grammar nerds, he seems to be afflicted with what he calls the "curse of knowledge", assuming that everyone else starts off with the same knowledge base that he possesses.

The third problem is similar to the one above. In one chapter he puts a lot of time into converting sentences into syntax trees. I found that following along with this analysis a bit tedious with no real payoff for the effort. I think it would have been more intuitive to simply have sentences displayed with words and phrases circled, along with arrows showing the relationships to other parts of the sentence.

The fourth and final problem is that he had little new to say on most of the topics he brought up. I had hoped that his background as a cognitive scientist would provide me with insights that mere grammarians could not provide, but such insights were few.

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