The Sense of Style

“Style manuals that are innocent of linguistics also are crippled in dealing with the aspect of writing that evokes the most emotion: correct and incorrect usage. Many style manuals treat traditional rules of usage the way fundamentalists treat the Ten Commandments: as unerring laws chiseled in sapphire for mortals to obey or risk eternal damnation. But skeptics and freethinkers who probe the history of these rules have found that they belong to an oral tradition of folklore and myth.”

Steven Pinker critiques writers on style who do not have a scientific understanding of language, suggesting that their rules are often arbitrary and too rigid for the ever-changing nature of language. By comparing many style rules to “folklore and myth” Pinker encourages the reader to question some of the style advice they have learned, creating an openness to the science-based recommendations he will make.

“The graybeard sensibilities of the style mavens come not just from an underappreciation of the fact of language change but from a lack of reflection on their own psychology. As people age, they confuse changes in themselves with changes in the world, and changes in the world with moral decline—the illusion of the good old days. And so every generation believes that the kids today are degrading the language and taking civilization down with it[.]”

Pinker argues that every generation experiences moral panic about language changing, usually blaming the younger generation for not respecting certain language conventions or inventing new words. This passage delegitimizes style writers who scorn new approaches to speaking and writing, attributing language panic to nostalgia rather than a true knowledge and appreciation for how language really works.

“Good writers are avid readers. They have absorbed a vast inventory of words, idioms, constructions, tropes, and rhetorical tricks, and with them a sensitivity to how they mesh and how they clash. This is the elusive ‘ear’ of a skilled writer—the tacit sense of style which every honest stylebook […] confesses cannot be explicitly taught.”

Pinker argues that good writers have bolstered their skill by reading others’ writing, and that this exposure helps them develop a good “ear” for strong, stylish writing. Pinker claims that people can consciously improve their writing through lessons and style books such as his. This passage encourages the reader to read more and consider what makes their favorite writing so engaging.