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
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:
... See moreSteven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Perfecting the craft is a lifelong calling, and mistakes are part of the game.
Steven 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
The deliberate use of surprising transitions—colons, dashes, block quotations—is one of the hallmarks of lively prose.
Steven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
I should use them back
First place in 1997 went to the eminent critic Fredric Jameson for the opening sentence of his book on film criticism: The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere
... 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
If space is now expanding, then at ever earlier times the universe must have been ever smaller. At some moment in the distant past, everything we now see—the ingredients responsible for every planet, every star, every galaxy, even space itself—must have been compressed to an infinitesimal speck that then swelled outward, evolving into the universe
... See moreSteven 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
... See moreSteven Pinker • The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
The best words not only pinpoint an idea better than any alternative but echo it in their sound and articulation, a phenomenon called phonesthetics, the feeling of sound.