| Record Number |
722263 |
| ISBN |
9780241180020 (paperback) |
| Author |
Pinker, Steven, 1954- author. |
| Title |
The sense of style : the thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century / Steven Pinker. |
| Publisher/Date |
London : Allen Lane an imprint of Penguin Books, 2014. |
| copyright2014 |
| Pagination etc. |
viii, 359 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography, etc. note |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [319]-338) and index. |
| Contents note |
Good writing -- A window onto the world -- The curse of knowledge -- The web, the tree, and the string -- Arcs of coherence -- Telling right from wrong. |
| Summary Note |
In The Sense of Style, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking the usage guide for the 21st 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. |
| Subject |
Rhetoric |
| Style, Literary |
| Shelf Location |
808.02 PINK |
