The Sense of Style

Starred review from June 30, 2014
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 (The Language Instinct). Pinker deploys history, logic, and his own deep understanding of language to debunk many prescriptivist grammatical strictures: go ahead and split that infinitive, he declares, start a sentence with a conjunction, and use passive constructions when they improve a sentence’s legibility. (He does give vent to a few of his own prescriptivist peeves, such as the use “literally” to mean “figuratively”). More broadly, he explains how the brain processes language into principles of sound writing, recommending a “classic prose style” that concretely directs the reader’s gaze at the world, deploring the “curse of knowledge” that leads academics to believe that readers understand their jargon, and mounting a spot-on critique of incoherent argumentation in a passage by military historian John Keegan. Pinker’s linguistic theory can be heavy going at times, but his prose is usually a model of clarity, lightly-worn erudition, and keen insight. Every writer can profit from—and every reader can enjoy—Pinker’s analysis of the ways in which skillfully chosen words engage the mind. Agent: John Brockman, Brockman Inc.

August 15, 2014
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. It's a strange thing, but many guidebooks on writing are written by people who've written only books on how to write. Not so Pinker's. Though being a linguist, as he is, doesn't make a writer any more than putting air in an airplane wheel makes a pilot, he's also got numerous best-selling books (e.g., The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 2011, etc.) behind him-and even that doesn't make him an expert, so we're lucky that, like fellow manual writer Stephen King, he's blessed with common sense. As a linguist, Pinker inclines to descriptivism but doesn't rule out prescriptivism entirely. "The primary lifeline between an incoming sentence and a reader's web of knowledge is the topic," he writes, carefully separating the different senses of the term "topic" in the realms of linguistics and grammar before discussing such common-sensical things as orderly transitions, logical coordination and pronoun/antecedent agreement. The author insists that any writer must be an "avid" reader, and he takes many of his examples from current literature to support pronouncements such as, "But if the subject matter is unfamiliar and has many parts, and if the writer doesn't set the reader up by focusing on one of those parts as a fact worth taking seriously, the reader may not know what he should no longer be thinking." Allowing for the "the reader/he" convention, there's nothing objectionable to that observation or, indeed, to most of the book, even if Pinker courts anarchy by allowing the distinction between "less" and "fewer" to collapse. Fatter and more complex than Strunk and White, and some of the more technical arguments may make this a tough sell on the first-year comp front. Still, Pinker's vade mecum is a worthy addition to any writer's library.

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August 1, 2014
Perhaps the keyword in the book's subtitle is thinking, as this is not a simple, easily digested style book but more a dense, fascinating analysis of the many ways communication can be stymied by word choice, placement, stress, and the like. Pinker (The Language Instinct, 1994) includes the expected funny examples of commonly misread headlines and such, but his explanations run rich and deep, complemented by lists, cartoons, charts on diagramming sentences, and more. Hence, this is not a quick read but more a study of how to write well. Such writing, Pinker notes, requires the drafting of a blueprint, attention to detail, and an overall sense of harmony and balance. The examples Pinker analyzes run the gamut from deadline-pressured journalists, stuffy academics, corporate hacks, and the inexperienced to seasoned authors, as erudition and knowledge can and do stand in the way of clarity. Pinker himself has no problem with this, and those serious about writing (and the anal retentives bent on correcting it) will gain a fine understanding of misunderstanding and how to avoid it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 15, 2014

Psycholinguist and cognitive scientist Pinker (The Language Instinct) explains up front that his work isn't a traditional writing manual; rather, he says, it's designed for those who seek to improve already sturdy writing skills. He advocates using classic style, and explains what that means thoroughly. Devised by literary scholars Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner and intended for writers addressing a general audience, classic style is best accomplished by the writer imagining that she (the generic gender pronoun used by Pinker) is staging a scene. The language used must be straightforward and take logical steps from one idea to the next. Pinker also describes, in detail and often with great humor, what not to do. No legalese or professionalese, for example. Also to be avoided (though the author explains why it's so difficult to do) is assuming that your readers know what you do--a phenomenon he refers to as "the curse of knowledge." Pinker employs the straightforwardness he recommends, and all readers will come away with ways to make their writing more vivid and accessible. Readers looking to gain a greater benefit from the book can improve their skills by digesting his advice over time; the more ambitious will spend time with Pinker's diagrams that parse sentences to ensure that writers learn never to create--a wonderful phrase--"garden paths" that lead their readers astray. VERDICT A thoughtful addition for writing instruction collections; the chapter on "The Curse of Knowledge" should be mandatory reading for everyone.--Henrietta Verma, Library Journal

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2014

Psycholinguist and cognitive scientist Pinker (The Language Instinct) explains up front that his work isn't a traditional writing manual; rather, he says, it's designed for those who seek to improve already sturdy writing skills. He advocates using classic style, and explains what that means thoroughly. Devised by literary scholars Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner and intended for writers addressing a general audience, classic style is best accomplished by the writer imagining that she (the generic gender pronoun used by Pinker) is staging a scene. The language used must be straightforward and take logical steps from one idea to the next. Pinker also describes, in detail and often with great humor, what not to do. No legalese or professionalese, for example. Also to be avoided (though the author explains why it's so difficult to do) is assuming that your readers know what you do--a phenomenon he refers to as "the curse of knowledge." Pinker employs the straightforwardness he recommends, and all readers will come away with ways to make their writing more vivid and accessible. Readers looking to gain a greater benefit from the book can improve their skills by digesting his advice over time; the more ambitious will spend time with Pinker's diagrams that parse sentences to ensure that writers learn never to create--a wonderful phrase--"garden paths" that lead their readers astray. VERDICT A thoughtful addition for writing instruction collections; the chapter on "The Curse of Knowledge" should be mandatory reading for everyone.--Henrietta Verma, Library Journal

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.