the next sentence restates the contrast ,also in parallel languagr ,but avoid the tedium of repeating yet again by juxtaposing familiar idioms that have the same rhythm : been in my place. the resolution to the paradox -that a bad thing ,dying,implies a good thing ,having lived -is explained with parallel constructions :never going to ,never going to. good writting start strong.not with a banality,but with a contentful observation that provokes curiosity.who wouldn't want to find out how this mystery will be solved? short simple words ,also in parallel language in the teeth of there stupefying odds it is you and I,in our ordinariness ,that are there we know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. certain those unborn ghosts include greater poets than keats ,scientists greater than newton. the potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in face never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of arabia. We are going to die ,and that makes us the lucky ones ,Most people never going to die because they are never going to be born. starting point for becoming a good writter ia to be a good reader, weiters acquire their technique by spotting ,savoring ,and recerse-engineering wxamples of good prose.
education is an admirable thing ,but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing is worth knowing can be taught The writer knows the truth before putting it into words he is not using the occasion of writing to sort out what he thinks.A writer of classic prose must simulate two experiences: showing the reader something in the world, and engaging her in conversation. The truth can be known, and is not the same as the language that reveals it prose is a window onto the world. It succeeds when it aligns language with the truth, the proof of success being clarity and simplicity. The purpose of writing is presentation, and its motive is disinterested truth. The writer can see something that the reader has not yet noticed, and he orients the reader’s gaze so that she can see it for herself. 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.įilled 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. 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. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose.
Rethinking the usage guide for the twenty-first century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. In The Sense of Style, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. 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?