The Sense of Style

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone professor of psychology at Harvard University and one of the world’s best-known psycholinguists. A prolific writer, Pinker is the author of many books about the relationship between language and psychology. These include The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (1994), Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (1999), and The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (2005). Pinker is also known for his passionate arguments in favor of rationalism. His book Rationality: What it is, Why it Seems Scarce, Why it Matters explains why rationalism is important and how people can think more rationally. Another of his books, Enlightenment Now, also celebrates reason, noting that rational thought, rather than romantic or religious thought, was one of the main triumphs of the Enlightenment and has since fueled substantial human progress.

While distinct from these past works in both its tone and subject matter, The Sense of Style contains important threads of Pinker’s other arguments. The Sense of Style continues the author’s exploration of language from a new angle, as he focuses on what constitutes strong writing, and how any writer can improve their written work by following certain evidence-based conventions.