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The Associated Press Stylebook 2015 This new edition contains more than 3,000 A to Z entries detailing the AP’s rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, and word and numeral usage. Learn more
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Best Books of the Month
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.
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.Read more ›
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72 of 77 people found the following review helpful
The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker
The Sense of Style is a scholarly and witty book on the art of writing well. Bestselling author, linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker provides readers with a new writing-guide for the twenty-first century. He breaks down grammar rules and challenges purists on the best use of language. This challenging 368-page book includes the following six chapters: 1. Good Writing, 2. A Window onto the World, 3. The Curse of Knowledge, 4. The Web, the Tree, and the String, 5. Arcs of Coherence, and 6. Telling Right from Wrong.
Positives: 1. Dr. Pinker consistently produces quality work. 2. A "very" unique topic, the art of writing well from a scientific perspective. You don't have to read the book to get my joke. 3. Good use of wit that adds panache to a book about writing style. 4. Good advice throughout the book. "By replacing dogma about usage with reason and evidence, I hope not just to avoid giving ham-fisted advice but to make the advice that I do give easier to remember than a list of dos and don'ts." 5. Explains the three main reasons why style matters. 6. Provides insights on how to become a good writer. "Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose." 7. Supports good style over writing dogma. "The key to good style, far more than obeying any list of commandments, is to have a clear conception of the make-believe world in which you're pretending to communicate." "The purpose of writing is presentation, and its motive is disinterested truth. It succeeds when it aligns language with the truth, the proof of success being clarity and simplicity.Read more ›
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156 of 175 people found the following review helpful
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.Read more ›
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