The Sense of Style

“The graybeard sensibilities of the style mavens come not just from an underappreciation of the fact of language change but from a lack of reflection on their own psychology. As people age, they confuse changes in themselves with changes in the world, and changes in the world with moral decline—the illusion of the good old days. And so every generation believes that the kids today are degrading the language and taking civilization down with it[.]”

Pinker argues that every generation experiences moral panic about language changing, usually blaming the younger generation for not respecting certain language conventions or inventing new words. This passage delegitimizes style writers who scorn new approaches to speaking and writing, attributing language panic to nostalgia rather than a true knowledge and appreciation for how language really works.

“Good writers are avid readers. They have absorbed a vast inventory of words, idioms, constructions, tropes, and rhetorical tricks, and with them a sensitivity to how they mesh and how they clash. This is the elusive ‘ear’ of a skilled writer—the tacit sense of style which every honest stylebook […] confesses cannot be explicitly taught.”

Pinker argues that good writers have bolstered their skill by reading others’ writing, and that this exposure helps them develop a good “ear” for strong, stylish writing. Pinker claims that people can consciously improve their writing through lessons and style books such as his. This passage encourages the reader to read more and consider what makes their favorite writing so engaging.

“And showing off with fancy words you barely understand can make you look pompous and occasionally ridiculous. But a skilled writer can enliven and sometimes electrify her prose with the judicious insertion of a surprising word. According to studies of writing quality, a varied vocabulary and the use of unusual words are two of the features that distinguish sprightly prose from mush.”

Pinker advises the reader to use formal or complex words sparingly. He claims that by using too many “fancy words,” writers may make their writing seem pretentious or difficult to understand. At the same time, the language of the passage—words like “pompous” and “judicious”—demonstrates that a few elevated words can make a sentence more memorable.

“We live in an era of social science, and have become accustomed to understanding the social world in terms of ‘forces,’ ‘pressures,’ ‘processes,’ and ‘developments.’ It is easy to forget that those ‘forces’ are statistical summaries of the deeds of millions of men and women who act on their beliefs in pursuit of their desires. The habit of submerging the individual into abstractions can lead not only to bad science (it’s not as if ‘social forces’ obeyed Newton’s laws) but to dehumanization.”

Pinker reminds writers to carefully consider their phrasing about societal events and groups of people. He warns against writing in “abstractions” that ignore individual experiences and thereby dehumanize people by treating them as a monolith. While abstract terms such as social “forces” or “pressures” may sometimes be necessary, Pinker challenges writers to portray social groups and events in a nuanced way that better captures people’s full humanity.

“The authors also share an attitude: they do not hide the passion and relish that drive them to tell us about their subjects. They write as if they have something important to say. But no, that doesn’t capture it. They write as if they have something important to show. And that, we shall see, is a key ingredient in the sense of style.”

Pinker writes passionately about the way that enthusiasm creates interesting writing. By tracing his own thought process, revising “say” to “show,” he registers the urgency that characterizes compelling prose.

“Writing is above all an act of pretense. We have to visualize ourselves in some kind of conversation, or correspondence, or oration, or soliloquy, and put the words into the mouth of the little avatar who represents us in this simulated world. The key to good style, far more than obeying any list of commandments, is to have a clear conception of the make-believe world in which you’re pretending to communicate.”

Pinker contends that good writers are able to clearly imagine their audience and understand the text from their reader’s perspective. This passage reminds the reader that rigid style rules are often less important than considering the readers’ perspective and the messages that the writer wants to convey to them.

“Classic writing, with its assumption of equality between writer and reader, makes the reader feel like a genius. Bad writing makes the writer feel like a dunce.”

This passage contributes to Pinker’s theme on The Writer-Reader Relationship. Pinker claims that classic writers are adept at explaining events and concepts to the reader without inaccessible prose or a condescending tone. The author suggests that this is a credit to classic style, which in addition to being understandable is more rewarding to read.

“In classic prose the writer is directing the gaze of the reader to something in the world she can see for herself. All eyes are on an agent: a protagonist, a mover and shaker, a driving force. The agent pushes or prods something, and it moves or changes. Or something interesting comes into view, and the reader examines it part by part.”

Pinker uses the metaphor of a reader’s gaze to explain how classic writers are able to share their vision and understanding. The writer does not put herself in the center of the image; rather, she gently directs a reader to focus on the agent or driving force of a given idea, allowing the reader to process information on her own.

“The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose. It simply doesn’t occur to the writer that her readers don’t know what she knows—that they haven’t mastered the patois of her guild, can’t divine the missing steps that seem too obvious to mention, have no way to visualize a scene that to her is as clear as day.”

The so-called curse of knowledge shifts the responsibility for misunderstanding from the reader to the writer, while leaving open the possibility for improvement. Writers who assume too much about the knowledge of their readers are, ultimately, responsible when those readers fail to grasp their meaning. Even otherwise “good people” can fall prey to this curse.

“Most writers cannot afford focus groups or A/B testing, but they can ask a roommate or colleague or family member to read what they wrote and comment on it. Your reader needn’t even be a representative sample of your intended audience. Often it’s enough that they are not you.”

Pinker compares the practice of sharing written work with others to the kinds of assessments other industries use on an ongoing basis. Sharing one’s written work, he implies, need not be an exercise in vulnerability or exposure; rather, it mimics the best practices of other disciplines.

“It’s hard enough to formulate a thought that is interesting and true. Only after laying a semblance of it on the page can a writer free up the cognitive resources needed to make the sentence grammatical, graceful, and, most important, transparent to the reader. The form in which thoughts occur to a writer is rarely the same as the form in which they can be absorbed by a reader. The advice in this and other stylebooks is not so much on how to write as how to revise.”

Pinker urges writers to take the editing process seriously and revise their work many times before completion, including before and after receiving feedback from others. He emphasizes that the editing process is as important as the initial writing process itself, since it provides writers with the opportunity to consider their reader’s experience and improve the clarity and style of the text.

“As with any form of mental self-improvement, you must learn to turn your gaze inward, concentrate on processes that usually run automatically, and try to wrest control of them so that you can apply them more mindfully.”

Pinker advises the reader to consider the dimensions of their writing that often seem routine or automatic as a way to become savvier about grammar. The practice of writing “mindfully” may help avoid errors in more complicated texts.

“Another way to prevent garden paths is to give some respect to the apparently needless little words which don’t contribute much to the meaning of a sentence and are in danger of ending up on the cutting room floor, but which can earn their keep by marking the beginnings of phrases.”

Although he earlier affirmed the dictum “omit needless words,” Pinker here offers a caveat: Not every word is as needless as it first appears. A too-aggressive pruning of prose may introduce ambiguous “garden paths” that impede understanding. In these cases, so-called needless words might become essential.

“The passive voice is just one of the gadgets that the English language makes available to rearrange phrases while preserving their semantic roles.”

Against the popular view, espoused by writing teachers and style manuals alike, that passive voice is a sin to be avoided at all costs, Pinker reframes it as just another “gadget.” The more neutral, instrumental term focuses on the passive voice’s particular use, rather than further demonizing it.

“Coherence begins with the writer and reader being clear about the topic. The topic corresponds to the small territory within the vast web of knowledge into which the incoming sentences should be merged. It may seem obvious that a writer should begin by laying her topic on the table for the reader to see, but not all writers do. A writer might think that it’s unsubtle to announce the topic in so many words, as in ‘This paper is about hamsters.’ Or she herself may discover her topic only after she has finished laying her ideas on paper, and forgets to go back and revise the opening to let the reader in on her discovery.”

The author recommends that writers follow the traditional approach to writing by clearly stating their main topic at the beginning of their work. Pinker refers to a study that demonstrated that a clear reference to the topic of an article greatly aided readers’ understanding and memory of the text. This passage provides writers with easily applicable advice and the necessary evidence to persuade them to put it into practice.

“Figuring out the right level of explicitness for coherence relations is a major reason that a writer needs to think hard about the state of knowledge of her readers and show a few of them a draft to see whether she got it right. It’s an aspect of the art of writing which depends on intuition, experience, and guesswork […]”

Pinker argues that each writer will have a different intended audience who has its own “state of knowledge.” This passage reminds writers to try to assess whether they are explaining their ideas in a way that their intended audience will understand. This quotation serves as a reminder that soliciting feedback from one’s audience is the most valuable way to gauge how readers will engage with one’s work.

“A coherent text is one in which the reader always knows which coherence relation holds between one sentence and the next.”

This short sentence encapsulates Pinker’s arguments about coherence, which, like other concepts, is rooted in The Reader’s Experience. As the sentence itself makes clear, not all repetition is redundancy. Judicious repetition, as with coherent/coherence, can help reinforce an author’s ideas.

“It’s not just readers who are confused by negations. Writers themselves can lose track and put too many of them into a word or sentence, making it mean the opposite of what they intended. The linguist Mark Liberman calls them misnegations, and points out that ‘they’re easy to fail to miss.’”

By way of explaining why negation may often confuse readers, Pinker offers a memorable example: the “misnegations” described by Liberman. The humorous line, “they’re easy to fail to miss” reinforces Pinker’s point in a memorable fashion. Moments like this—the abstract concept followed by a pithy example—are a central feature of Pinker’s style.

“The problem here is a lack of balance, of proportionality. An important principle in composition is that the amount of verbiage one devotes to a point should not be too far out of line with how central it is to the argument.”

In the course of his discussion of Keegan’s less-than-coherent prose, Pinker advises writers to connect the length of their discussions to the importance of those points to their overall topic. He challenges writers to consider the most important aspects of their arguments and invest more time and words into developing them compared to their lesser points.

“There is a big difference between a coherent passage of writing and a flaunting of one’s erudition, a running journal of one’s thoughts, or a published version of one’s notes. A coherent text is a designed object: an ordered tree of sections within sections, crisscrossed by arcs that track topics, points, actors, and themes, and held together by connectors that tie one proposition to the next.”

Pinker denigrates unplanned writing, comparing it to journals or notes, and urges the reader to remember that coherent prose is always carefully planned and “designed.” Pinker builds on the themes of The Reader’s Experience and The Importance of Clarity in Writing, since writers must organize their work so it can be as clear and engaging as possible for their readers.

“The writers I have in mind are the purists—also known as sticklers, pedants, peevers, snobs, snoots, nitpickers, traditionalists, language police, usage nannies, grammar Nazis, and the Gotcha! Gang. In their zeal to purify usage and safeguard the language, they have made it difficult to think clearly about the felicity in expression, and have muddied the task of explaining the art of writing.”

Pinker’s lengthy analysis of traditional writing rules in Chapter 6 debunks many writing myths that he ascribes to language purists. By rejecting the killjoy “language police,” Pinker signals his fidelity to the “art,” rather than the rules of writing—and implicitly condemns those who focus on the rules to the exclusion of expression. Pinker includes multiple examples of terms for such people to highlight that they reflect a common and well-known perspective and to hyperbolically characterize what he sees as their irrational strictness.

“That’s right: when it comes to correct English, there’s no one in charge; the lunatics are running the asylum. The editors of a dictionary read a lot, keeping their eyes open for new words and senses that are used by many writers in many contexts, and the editors add or change the definitions accordingly. Purists are often offended when they learn that this is how dictionaries are written.”

In the realm of language, nothing could seem to be more authoritative and prescriptive than a dictionary. However, Pinker reveals the more complex reality that the editors of dictionaries are themselves responsive to changes in language that happen in the broader world. Describing the present situation metaphorically as one where “the lunatics are running the asylum” pokes fun at those who hold up dictionaries as bastions of authority and implies that the seriousness of this critique may be misplaced.

“It is true that descriptive and prescriptive rules are different kinds of things and that descriptive and prescriptive grammarians are engaged in different kinds of activities. But it’s not true that if one grammarian is right then the other kind of grammarian is wrong.”

Pinker dismisses the notion that descriptivist grammarians and prescriptivist grammarians are inherently opposed to each other’s views. Pinker’s use of parallelism in the second sentence reinforces the complementary role that each type of grammarian can play in a broader conversation about writing.