The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

What is the secret of good prose? Does writing well even matter in an age of instant communication? Should we care? In this book about the modern art of writing, the author shows us why we all need a sense of style.

Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century might be regarded as an update of Fowler, eschewing pedantry, convoluted or pompous sentence construction, cliché, and inflexible grammatical rulesPinker is every bit as witty as Fowler, and writes in a similarly vigorous, direct and idiosyncratic manner. His book is accordingly much less boring than one might expect of a style manual. Indeed, it is often laugh-out-loud funny... Pinker knows that simplicity is more difficult to perfect than abstruse convolution. It helps enormously that he is such a beautiful stylist himself. Many of his sentences give great pleasure and he is never lofty or pleased with himself -- Paula Byrne * The Times *
Gentle humour accompanies Mr Pinker's good sense throughout the book, an antidote to bestselling, operatically irate usage guides that disparage those who disagree as idiots or barbarians. Mr Pinker explains eloquently not just what to do, but also why * Economist *
An outstanding source of wise advice -- Times * Oliver Kamm *
A thoughtful guide, tough-minded and up to date, for people who think they can write well but are willing to believe that they could write better -- Henry Hitchings * Guardian *
A canny and punchy polemic -- Stevie Davies * Independent *

Steven Pinker is one of the world's most influential thinkers and writers on the human condition. His popular and highly praised books include The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style, The Stuff of Thought, The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works, and The Language Instinct. The recipient of several major awards for his teaching, books, and scientific research, Pinker is Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He also writes frequently for The New York Times, the Guardian and other publications. He has been named Humanist of the Year, Prospect magazine's "The World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals," Foreign Policy's "100 Global Thinkers," and Time magazine's "The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today."

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781846145506
ISBN 10	1846145503
Title	The Sense of Style
Author	Steven Pinker
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	2014-09-04
Number of pages	368
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.