Стивен Пинкер - The Sense of Style - The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

My editors at Penguin, Wendy Wolf in the United States and Thomas Penn and Stefan McGrath in the United Kingdom, and my literary agent, John Brockman, supported this project at every stage, and Wendy provided detailed criticism and advice on the first draft.

I’m grateful, too, for the love and support of the other members of my family: my father, Harry Pinker; my stepdaughters, Yael Goldstein Love and Danielle Blau; my niece and nephews; my in-laws, Martin and Kris; and my sister, Susan Pinker, and brother, Robert Pinker, to whom this book is dedicated.

Parts of chapter 6 have been adapted from my essay on usage in The American Heritage Dictionary, Fifth Edition, and from my article “False Fronts in the Language Wars,” published in Slate in 2012.

THE BEGINNING

Let the conversation begin …

Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@penguinukbooks

Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube.com/penguinbooks

Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest

Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/penguinbooks

Find out more about the author and

discover more stories like this at Penguin.co.uk

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Gauteng 2193, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC 2014

First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2014

Copyright © Steven Pinker, 2014

Illustration credits

Page 52: MacNelly editorial, © Jeff MacNelly – distributed by King Features

57: CartoonStock

61: James Stevenson/The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.com

79: Shoe © 1993 Jeff MacNelly – distributed by King Features

202: Bizarro used with permission of Dan Piraro, King Features Syndicate and the Cartoonist Group. All rights reserved.

256 and 260: Ryan North

284: © 2007 Harry Bliss. Used with permission of Pippin Properties, Inc.

294: Copyright 2008 by Debbie Ridpath Ohi. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

297: William Haefeli/The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.com

298: Zippy the Pinhead © 1997 Griffith – distributed by King Features Syndicate, world rights reserved

301: xkcd.com

Credits for certain illustrations appear adjacent to the respective works.

Cover image by Kayla Varley

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-1-846-14551-3

CHAPTER 1: GOOD WRITING

* Technical terms are defined in the Glossary.

CHAPTER 2: A WINDOW ONTO THE WORLD

* To avoid the awkwardness of strings of he or she, I have borrowed a convention from linguistics and will consistently refer to a generic writer of one sex and a generic reader of the other. The male gender won the coin toss, and will represent the writer in this chapter; the roles will alternate in subsequent ones.

CHAPTER 3: THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE

* In this chapter, it’s the female gender’s turn to be the generic writer.