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

I like to read style manuals for another reason, the one that sends botanists to the garden and chemists to the kitchen: it’s a practical application of our science. Here is the great essayist reminiscing about his teacher: Lucas, George Orwell, William Safire, and of course White himself, the beloved author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. White turned into their famous little book, was studded with gems of self-exemplification such as “Write with nouns and verbs,” “Put the emphatic words of a sentence at the end,” and best of all, his prime directive, “Omit needless words.” Many eminent stylists have applied their gifts to explaining the art, including Kingsley Amis, Jacques Barzun, Ambrose Bierce, Bill Bryson, Robert Graves, Tracy Kidder, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, F. William Strunk’s course notes on writing, which his student E. It’s also that credible guidance on writing must itself be well written, and the best of the manuals are paragons of their own advice.

It’s not just that I welcome advice on the lifelong challenge of perfecting the craft of writing. Ever since I was assigned Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style in an introductory psychology course, the writing guide has been among my favorite literary genres. Eye-opening, mind-expanding and cheerful, The Sense of Style shows that good style is part of what it means to be human.I love style manuals. 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 bestselling 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