Identify Books To The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
ISBN: | 0670025852 (ISBN13: 9780670025855) |
Edition Language: | English |
Steven Pinker
Hardcover | Pages: 368 pages Rating: 4.07 | 6298 Users | 768 Reviews

List Epithetical Books The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Title | : | The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century |
Author | : | Steven Pinker |
Book Format | : | Hardcover |
Book Edition | : | First Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 368 pages |
Published | : | September 30th 2014 by Viking (first published September 4th 2014) |
Categories | : | Language. Writing. Nonfiction. Humanities. Linguistics. Reference. Psychology |
Explanation As Books The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
A short and entertaining book on the modern art of writing well by New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care? In The Sense of Style, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking the usage guide for the twenty-first century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. In this short, cheerful, and eminently practical book, Pinker shows how writing depends on imagination, empathy, coherence, grammatical knowhow, and an ability to savor and reverse engineer the good prose of others. He replaces dogma about usage with reason and evidence, allowing writers and editors to apply the guidelines judiciously, rather than robotically, being mindful of what they are designed to accomplish. Filled with examples of great and gruesome prose, Pinker shows us how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right.Rating Epithetical Books The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Ratings: 4.07 From 6298 Users | 768 ReviewsJudgment Epithetical Books The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
What a wonderful book! Pinker's prose is absolutely delicious. I learmed so much from reading this - not the least of which is why my colleagues in the English Department don't value the old practice of diagramming sentences as much as I do. (But I also recognized that diagramming taught me syntax - and I'm wondering whether students now need to depend solely on reading to learn that same syntax.) Pinker is proficient at explaining why we write the way we do - and he is effective at condemnningEarthshattering it is not. Some good cartoons, though.
Pinker has a contagious love of language and is that rare teacher who actually seems to practice what he preaches. His humor and the wonderful examples/anecdotes he employs throughout the book made it both an enjoyable (for the most part) and memorable read.The first three chapters, centered mostly around what good writing does and how it does this, had me so enamored I thought this might be my new favorite book on writing (I enjoy reading about writing almost as much as I enjoy actually

This book was recommended to me by Professor Geoff Pullum, a grammarian of the highest caliber. I asked him for a book to recommend instead of Strunk & White that he, within good reason frowns upon. It is such a relief to know that we don't need a rigid book of style in order to be good writers. We need a "sense" of style instead, that sense that helps me to cook Egyptian rice like no other, as the women of Egypt would call it "el-nafas", that is, the "breath". Pinker is a genius and
I love Pinker, and I love writing, so this really was the book for me. It was denser than I expected, and I thus I wouldn't recommend it for any looking for a light read in writing.The focus is more on academic non-fiction than other forms of non-fiction or fiction, but offers generally timeless advice about style and clarity. Pinker strikes a good balance between useful rules and avoiding pedantry. He occasionally breaks his own advice by overusing his large and eccentric vocabulary, but its
Having just embarked on a fairly intensive writing course, I asked my mentor for some recommendations of books on the craft of writing. This book, "The Sense of Style" was at the top of his list, and I can see why.The author, Steven Pinker, is a Psychology professor at Harvard, and has also done much research on language and cognition (he's described as a Cognitive Scientist). Further, he is chair of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary. And it shows. All of it. He has written a
Perhaps a book on how to write by a scientist who studies neurology and linguistics and how they interact seems odd, but its right up Pinkers street. He loves to think about language and the way it evolved, and what is natural for our brains when it comes to language. While he does go into the rules of grammar and the parts of speech and all of that, he tempers it with an understanding of why we make the kinds of mistakes we do, and when it might be time to let go and surrender to the fact that
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