Book Review: The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker has studied cognitive phenomenon from a neuropsychological perspective, probing brain mechanisms by examing visual perception and speech. Simply by strongly arguing that languange is a specific, inborn human cognitive ability like vision, he places thinking as the result of brain function and structure rather than taking place in an abstract world of mind. His writing has been central to the school of thought I think of as “embodied mind”.

Beginning in 1994 with The Language Instinct, Pinker wrote accessable yet rigorous presentations of his views on brain, mind and cognitive phenomenon. Most important for my way of thinking was the idea that cognitive abilities tend to be adaptations of more fundamental physical precepts, grounding symbols as real perceptions, but in an internal representation that allows abstraction from the purely physical.

Compared to his previous books, The Sense of Style is more light weight from a theoretical perspective, but interesting as a practical application of neuropsychology and philosophy. There is always as sense that writing is a way to pattern other minds, so that written language should use cognitive structure to be most effective. For example, in discussions of sentence structure, the linear nature of sentence parsing is emphasized, with advice to prevent misleading the reader with punctuation misdirection. Sentences should be presented with the heaviest last to lead the thoughts of the reader from the given to the new. Much of this echoes advice from writers past, but we now see it from the cognitive perspective rather than from the “this is what works from my experience” view.

For my writing here at ODB, I took to heart the need to present work in “consistent thematic strings”, laying out a topic then supporting it with concepts that explain, enrich or comment on the thought. In The Sense of StyePinker emphasizes the need to refer to any particular idea in a consistent manner to build the reader’s ability to keep track of that idea as a single symbolic entity. Writing a blog as a “coherent text” is a huge challenge because of it’s episodic nature. A blog can’t be fully architected with an outline, it flows as a long discourse. Perhaps hypertext techniques are one solution to this problem. Links to previous writing can enforce a kind of discipline to create at least an emergent structure. This is difficult with a simple string of posts in a web content system like WordPress. Some organization of blog posts with notes like Tinderbox or in plain text a Zettelkasten system is probably necessary behind the scenes as a means of organizing the emergent structure of this style of writing.

In the end, The Sense of Style fulfills its purpose as a style manual for the 21st century. Its based on cognitive science and real world usage, not myths and formalisms. The final section, “Telling Right from Wrong” provides lists of usage advice, but turns more discursive and is often incomplete, feeling like a bit of a compromise in structure. As a two part book- a history and exposition on style and then some examples it succeeds well enough.