The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
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The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
we are overconfident, sometimes to the point of delusion, about our ability to infer what other people think, even the people who are closest to us.
Steven Pinker • 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
Classic writing, with its assumption of equality between writer and reader, makes the reader feel like a genius. Bad writing makes the reader feel like a dunce.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
when the land turned to dust, not “the Dust Bowl”; when there was nothing to eat, not “the Potato Famine”; the landless, not “the peasants.” Wilkerson will not allow us to snooze through a recitation of familiar verbiage.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Academics, consultants, policy wonks, and other symbolic analysts
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
readers understand and remember material far better when it is expressed in concrete language that allows them to form visual images,
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
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.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Fox interrupts her narration without warning to redirect our gaze to Phillips in her prime. A writer, like a cinematographer, manipulates the viewer’s perspective on an ongoing story, with the verbal equivalent of camera angles and quick cuts.