The book has two parts: in the first, Pinker identifies the techniques that make prose compelling and the bad habits that can make it soggy, and in the second he focuses on contentious points of usage, of the sort addressed by the American humorist Calvin Trillin's quip: "'Whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler." Now his distaste for the deathly edicts that glut most current volumes on literary style has led him to create what he calls "a writing guide for the 21st century". The Harvard psychology professor is a rigorous thinker whose previous books, including The Language Instinct and The Stuff of Thought, have been distinguished by a flair for making highly technical subjects seem not just accessible but positively jaunty. In The Sense of Style, Steven Pinker cheerfully launches himself on to this terrain.
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