
The Sense of Style
The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
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By:
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Steven Pinker
A short and entertaining book on the modern art of writing well by New York Times best-selling author Steven Pinker.
Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care?
In The Sense of Style, the best-selling 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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Great audio book! Will be listening to it again.
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great read, great advice
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Great book, but a bit too complex for listening
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Defence against Grammar Nazis
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A good addition to a writer's collection
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I've been corrected on grammar a lot and confused a lot. One can't please everyone unless one never talks.
For Pinker the main thing is communication, not following rules. The rules change; they keep changing.
Common sense approach that changed my mind
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A stylish read
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A well-researched, beautifully written guide.
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It isn't your father's writing handbook. (My mother was an English Professor so I have seen quite a few.} Nor is it a how-to technical manual like the Hargrave Handbook.
Instead (like other Pinker books) this works from deep principles, to solve the daunting problems of written communication.
I also bought the book, so I could easily refer back to areas that I want to apply better in my own writing.
Excellent Author on Writer's Craft
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The following chapters have many gems on writing in English.
Great book.
best of the best
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