Steven Pinker's "The Sense of Style: A Guide to Writing in the 21st Century for the Discerning Reader

Jacob Westerhoff: I have several grammar books stretching from the '70s to present time, and one thing I noticed is that academics love complicating things. Luckily, one of the top academics wrote this books and brought things back to its basics, including how to sort out English and American punctuation and what actually works and makes sense. A badly needed book and always at hand in my academic functions.

Australia on Nov 03, 2023

Gianni Da Re Lombardi: Alcuni capitoli sono troppo tecnici per il lettore comune, ovvero il non specialista in linguistica.

Offre comunque interessanti e utili approfondimenti per chi scrive di professione, si tratti di un giornalista, uno scrittore o un lavoratore intellettuale che ogni tanto produce documenti scritti che abbiano l'obiettivo di farsi comprendere.

Italy on Oct 10, 2023

Edmund Esterbauer: There are some very entertaining examples of different writing styles but if everyone followed Pinker's advice the English language would become very mundane and staid.

Australia on Oct 02, 2023

Narendra Baruah: It's should be read like a math or physics book otherwise you are reading gibberish

India on Jul 26, 2023

Tom G.: The first part of The Sense of Style is very well-made and instructive. It shows how the grammar, the style and the semantics give the reader a better experience by explaining how the brain processes the information — in a summarized way and layman's terms. The author has the knack of laying it down clearly, sometimes with humour, and always with relevant text examples that he analyzes to illustrate what is right or wrong, and how to improve it if necessary.

However, Steven Pinker likes a rant. After a few introductory chapters, he starts a holy war against what he calls 'grammar maven', 'pundit', or similar condescending terms, arguing that many rules are actually wrong. That problem is especially acute in the last part of the book, which reviews a hundred usage questions like subject-verb agreement, punctuation, can/may, and misunderstood idioms. It could have been very educational, but many of those issues are filled with long, raving self-justifications of why such and such rule is wrong. Sometimes, the references he chooses to support one point even contradict another point he was trying to make before.

I think the general idea is to teach critical thinking...

France on Jun 24, 2023

Ed Battistella: Steven Pinker’s <I>The Sense of Style</I> fits into the tradition of style guides that began with Fowler and continues up through Bryan Garner. It will inevitably be compared with Willard Stunk and E. B. White’s <I>Elements of Style</I>, that sputnik-era Seussification of grammar and style. But the real comparison is with Joseph Williams’s excellent, but somewhat dated, book <I>Style: Towards Clarity and Grace</I>, one of the first works to blend linguistics and style. Pinker adopts and updates some of Williams’s insights (with all due acknowledgment of course) and connect them even more closely to current research in psycholinguistics and grammar.

Chapters 1-3 warm the reader up, with Pinker’s characteristic charm and good humor. In Chapter 1, “Good Writing,” Pinker reverse engineers (as he puts it) several examples of clear exposition, showing the value of simply thinking through what works in writing—strong starts, fresh idioms and diction, occasional playfulness, use of rhythm and meter, attention to the reader’s vantage point.

Chapter 2, “A Window on the World,” bring in the work of Francis-Noël Thomas...

United States on Nov 27, 2014

Unitive News Reporter: Rabid fans of Pinker (like me) will NOT be disappointed with this book! It would be a mistake to assume all the Strunk and White, Elements of Style stuff promoted by the publisher in some way limits this gem of a book to writers and writing. What we love about Pinker: -- assuming his readers are bright -- covering potentially "boring" topics like linguistics as they relate to cognition in can't-put-it-down fashion -- getting into the underlying mechanics of and with deep analysis, logic and example dissection, (among many others) are all here in abundance.

Like his other books, this wonderful text is a page turner. His usual sense of both humility and astonishment both abound. How can a topic as potentially dry as writing style carry that kind of tide? Many answers, but one is the quality of examples. In typical Pinker style, Steven gives an example (for instance, one of my favorites, Keegan and Clausewitz on war, p. 170), initially goes along with the abundant praise of style and logic, then in his typical brilliant yet childlike fashion, says, "Wait a minute?" and dissects the logic with the honed scalpel we're used to seeing in his neuro and linguistics masterpieces. And...

United States on Oct 01, 2014