The Sense of Style

Prologue

I love style manuals. 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. It s not just that I welcome advice on the lifelong challenge of perfecting the craft of writing. 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. William Strunk s course notes on writing, which his student E. B. 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. L. Lucas, George Orwell, William Safire, and of course White himself, the beloved author of Charlotte s Web and Stuart Little. Here is the great essayist reminiscing about his teacher:

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. I am a psycholinguist and a cognitive scientist, and what is style, after all, but the effective use of words to engage the human mind? It s all the more captivating to someone who seeks to explain these fields to a wide readership. I think about how language works so that I can best explain how language works.

But my professional acquaintance with language has led me to read the traditional manuals with a growing sense of unease. Strunk and White, for all their intuitive feel for style, had a tenuous grasp of grammar.2 They misdefined terms such as phrase, participle, and relative clause, and in steering their readers away from passive verbs and toward active

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has been listed among Foreign Policy magazine’s “Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.” He was the chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary 2008-2018.

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