For us to go from “I think I understand ” to “I understand ,” we need to see the sights and feel the motions. We are primates, with a third of our brains dedicated to vision, and large swaths devoted to touch, hearing, motion, and space. Via The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century: So trying to make the reader “see” is a good goal and being concrete has huge effects. One third of the human brain is dedicated to vision.
The most pleasant way to improve your knowledge of grammar.The science behind what makes writing work.The biggest mistake we all make - and how to fix it.The two key elements that will improve your writing.His latest book is The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Steven was recently ranked as one of the top 100 most eminent psychologists of the modern era. He’s also on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. Steven is a cognitive scientist and linguist at Harvard.
To find out the answer I gave Steven Pinker a call. Our brain works a particular way so what rules do we need to know to write the way the brain best understands? There are rules - even science - behind writing well. Eye-opening, mind-expanding and cheerful, The Sense of Style shows that good style is part of what it means to be human.Good writing is often looked at as an art and, frankly, that can be intimidating. This thinking person's guide to good writing shows why style still matters: in communicating effectively, in enhancing the spread of ideas, in earning a reader's trust and, not least, in adding beauty to the world. A guide for the new millennium, writes Steven Pinker, has to be different.ĭrawing on the latest research in linguistics and cognitive science, Steven Pinker replaces the recycled dogma of previous style guides with reason and evidence. Confusing changes in the world with moral decline, every generation believes the kids today are degrading society and taking language with it. They fail to deal with an inescapable fact about language: it changes over time, adapted by millions of writers and speakers to their needs. But most style guides fail to prepare people for the challenges of writing in the 21st century, portraying it as a minefield of grievous errors rather than a form of pleasurable mastery. More than ever before, the currency of our social and cultural lives is the written word, from Twitter and texting to blogs, e-readers and old-fashioned books. What is the secret of good prose? Does writing well even matter in an age of instant communication? Should we care? In this funny, thoughtful book about the modern art of writing, Steven Pinker shows us why we all need a sense of style.
Steven Pinker, the best-selling author of The Language Instinct, deploys his gift for explaining big ideas in The Sense of Style - an entertaining writing guide for the 21st century.
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