Written by Emme Raus, contributor
Steven Pinker gave a lecture based on his new book entitled “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the Twenty-First Century” at 8 p.m. in the SCADshow on Oct. 16. This event was presented by A Capella Books in association with DBF/365 and SCAD Atlanta.
Pinker is a bestselling author, cognitive scientist and experienced linguist in addition to being a Harvard University psychology professor. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of several awards for his research, teaching and books, he has been named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World Today and Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers as well as Humanist of the Year in 2006.
His talk delved into the concept for his latest book, the modern art of writing and the answers to questions about today’s English language. Rather than adhere to nitpicky grammatical guidelines set in stone by out of style English rulebooks, Pinker encourages new-age writers to craft strong prose from imagination, expression and coherence. Over the course of his speech, Pinker broke down his advice into four straightforward parts.
1. A model of prose
This section specified the differences in prose between the classic style and the non-classic style of writing. Pinker noted that the classic style is written in mind that the reader and the writer are equals while the non-classic style has a post-modern way of coming across as self-conscious and condescending. Some examples he gave of what to avoid when creating original prose were: clichés, mixed metaphors, tiptoeing around events rather than narrating them directly and what Pinker referred to as A.W.F.U.L: Americans Who Figuratively Use “Literally.”
2. Understanding the way language works
Pinker discussed how English mechanic books such as George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” refer to how the passive voice is frowned upon in writing. The passive voice describes how the subject of the sentence is acted upon by the verb whereas the active voice displays how the subject is active in relation to the verb. Pinker proved that the passive voice is good when properly used but frequently occurs in bad writing.
3. How to diagnosis good writing
During Pinker’s discussion about recognizing good writing, he elaborated upon a concept known as the “curse of knowledge.” This is the state of mind where the writer knows something and finds it hard to imagine another person not sharing that knowledge. He gave an example of a child finding ribbons instead of candy in a box of M&Ms. When asked afterwards what his friend will think is in the box of M&Ms, the child says ribbons because he or she cannot go back to their previous state of ignorance about what is in the box. Pinker stated that adults continue to have this idea when writing and to escape from this way of thinking he suggested that the writer “keep in mind the reader over their shoulder.” Show a friend a copy of the writing or look back on a piece after some time has passed to see if the jargon still makes sense.
4. How to make sense of correct grammar usage
The author talked about the ongoing “language war” between people he donned as prescriptivists and descriptivists. Prescriptivists, or “grammar Nazis,” like to dictate exactly the way people should speak versus descriptivists who prefer to describe the way people actually speak and write, no matter how informally. Pinker shared with the audience how he believes the writer should determine what grammar to use depending on what they are writing. He also noted that when a writer is stuck on how to distinguish between good and bad rules of grammar, it really is as simple as looking it up for each case.
At the conclusion of his lecture, Pinker answered questions from the audience for roughly 15 minutes and afterwards was kind enough to sign copies of his newest book for buyers in the SCADshow lobby.
