The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Steven Pinkeramazon.com
The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Every audience is spread out along a bell curve of sophistication, and inevitably we’ll bore a few at the top while baffling a few at the bottom; the only question is how many there will be of each. The curse of knowledge means that we’re more likely to overestimate the average reader’s familiarity with our little world than to underestimate it. An
... See moreSteven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
It takes cognitive toil and literary dexterity to pare an argument to its essentials, narrate it in an orderly sequence, and illustrate it with analogies that are both familiar and accurate. As Dolly Parton said, “You wouldn’t believe how much it costs to look this cheap.”
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Better still, the herons are not just any old subjects. They are actors who do things. They migrate, they avoid danger, they hunt, they eat, they stand. That is a hallmark of classic style, or for that matter any good style. It’s always easier for a reader to follow a narrative if he can keep his eyes on a protagonist who is moving the plot forward
... See moreSteven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Multiply these daily frustrations by a few billion, and you begin to see that the curse of knowledge is a pervasive drag on the strivings of humanity, on a par with corruption, disease, and entropy.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
the guiding metaphor of classic style: a writer, in conversation with a reader, directs the reader’s gaze to something in the world.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
show a draft to some people who are similar to our intended audience and find out whether they can follow it.26 This sounds banal but is in fact profound.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
reality, previews that read like a scrunched-up table of contents are there to help the writer, not the reader.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Thomas and Mark Turner have singled out one model of prose as an aspiration for such writers today. They call it classic style, and explain it in a wonderful little book called Clear and Simple as the Truth.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
The guiding metaphor of classic style is seeing the world. The writer can see something that the reader has not yet noticed, and he orients the reader’s gaze so that she can see it for herself.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
A writer of classic prose must simulate two experiences: showing the reader something in the world, and engaging her in conversation. The nature of each experience shapes the way that classic prose is written. The metaphor of showing implies that there is something to see. The things in the world the writer is pointing to, then, are concrete: peopl
... See more