The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

Author: Steven Pinker
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by atmosx   2020-12-03
The most famous book on prose is "the elements of style" but is anachronistic IMO. I propose to read "The Sense of Style" by Pinker instead: https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons-Writing/...
by therealdrag0   2017-10-23
I highly recommend Steven Pinker's "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century".

It is full of practical advice. I've read a lot of amateur (students/hobbyists) writing, so I can say his advice addresses a lot of common mistakes.

[] https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons-Writing/...

by thomasfoster96   2017-09-30
> Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation.

Please never do this.

Commas and full stops have meaning. You’re modifying the original quote without telling the reader that you have done so. How this became the accepted practice in so many style guides and grammar checkers I will never understand. I shall defer to Geoffrey Pullum’s Punctuation and human freedom [0], whose title is entirely appropriate, for justification. Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style [1] can provide the unconvinced further justification.

[0] http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/punctfree.pdf [1] https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons-Writing/...