Particularize Books In Favor Of 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
Explanation Supposing 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 PinkerWhy 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.
Be Specific About Of 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 | : | Deluxe Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 368 pages |
Published | : | September 30th 2014 by Viking (first published September 4th 2014) |
Categories | : | Language. Writing. Nonfiction. Humanities. Linguistics. Reference. Psychology |
Rating Of Books The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Ratings: 4.07 From 6298 Users | 768 ReviewsPiece Of Books The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
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 aI have enjoyed every one of Steven Pinker's books, and this one is no exception. Pinker writes engagingly, with humor, with intelligence, and with authority. He is the chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, so he has useful insights into how the English language is being used in print. As a linguist, he not only knows all the "rules" of writing, he understands the logic (or illogic) behind them. Moreover, he understands which "rules" are real, and which ones were just
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
The single most helpful book on writing (nonfiction, mainly) I have read. If you write in Mongolian (or any other language), this will help too. Chapter 1: How to learn from good prose. BChapter 2: How to write in the "classical style." (Pinker will explain what that is.) AChapter 3: "The main cause of incomprehensible prose is the difficulty of imagining what it's like for someone else not to know something that you know." BChapter 4: On syntax. Makes grammar interesting and very helpful. A
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
A great book on the considerations for writing non-fiction.This book was written with the amazing style of Pinker's usual writings and it was about that style and practical advice to improve one's writings. I am implementing the lessons I've learned from pinker in my writing process for my blog. And it improved my effectiveness to a great degree. It is worth knowing that most advice on the book contains pretty solid arguments for them. So you can use the arguments to find ways to improve
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