The Sense of Style

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The Sense of Style
The Sense of Style.jpg
Author Steven Pinker
LanguageEnglish
Published2014 (Penguin Books)
Publication placeUnited States of America
ISBN 9780670025855
OCLC 870919633

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century is a 2014 English style guide written by cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author Steven Pinker. Building upon earlier guides, such as Strunk & White's The Elements of Style and Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage , it applies science to the process of writing, and explains its prescriptions by citing studies in related fields – e.g., grammatical phenomena, mental dynamics, and memory load – as well as history and criticism, to "distinguish the rules that enhance clarity, grace, and emotional resonance from those that are based on myths and misunderstandings".

Pinker's prescriptions combine data from ballots given to the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary , the usage notes of several dictionaries and style guides, the historical analyses in Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage , the meta-analysis in Roy H. Copperud's American Usage and Style: The Consensus, and views from modern linguistics represented in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language and the blog Language Log .

Reception

The Sense of Style won Plain English Campaign's International Award for 2014, [1] and was ranked among the best books of 2014 by The Economist , [2] The Sunday Times , [3] and Amazon. [4] It received mainly positive reviews from several major publications, [5] including The New York Times , [6] Scientific American , [7] and The Washington Post . [8] Negative reviews appeared in The New Yorker [9] and The Telegraph , which stated that Pinker "doesn't have anything new to say" and which criticized Pinker for allegedly "logrolling" in his choice of which authors to quote. [10]

References

  1. ↑ "International award 2014". Plain English Campaign. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  2. ↑ "Books of the Year". The Economist. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  3. ↑ "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on February 4, 2015. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  4. ↑ "Best of 2014". Amazon.com. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  5. ↑ "Reviews & Feature Articles". Steven Pinker. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  6. ↑ McGrath, Charles (17 October 2014). "Steven Pinker's "The Sense of Style"". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  7. ↑ Cook, Gareth. "Steven Pinker's Sense of Style". Scientific American. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  8. ↑ Straaijer, Robin. "Can something be totally unique? Steven Pinker's new book says yes". The Washington Post. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  9. ↑ Heller, Nathan (3 November 2014). "Steven Pinker's Bad Grammar". The New Yorker. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  10. ↑ Preston, John (16 September 2014). "The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker, review: 'waffle and bilge'" . Retrieved 5 February 2018.
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