再Writing - The Sense of Style, September 6th 2014 P81 (文章読本ー書評)
Steven Pinker's career began with language in mind - particularly in the minds of children. Since then, he has become a celebrated (and sometimes controversial) public explorer of human nature and the reasons violence has declined. With “The Sense of Style” he returns to his first love, language and thought. Mr Pinker wants to help writers get inside their readers' minds. The single biggest cause of bad writing, he says, is “the curse of knowledge”. Children have an impossible time imagining that others do not know the things they know, and adults only partially grow out of this. Bad writers dwell on irrelevant details, or make logical connections that are logical only to them. Mr Pinker steers writers towards a “classic style”, in which the writer clearly points out things that may have escaped the reader's notice, but which anyone can understand with patient guidance. Classic style uses concrete words in straightforward sentences easily parsed by man's limited brain. Bad writing, exemplified by academese, bureaucratese and bewildering gadget manuals, does the opposite. Sentences are long, filled with abstract words, and make sense only to those who know most of the information. (Mr Pinker admits that he struggles daily with papers in his own academic field.) Why, psychologically, is bad writing bad? Working memory, which holds syntactic constructions in mind until they are complete, is easily overwhelmed. Mr Pinker uses memorable (and often funny) examples to show exactly what kind of sentences tax the mind. For example, violating expectations, such as upsetting chronological order, makes the reader do extra work. (When financial journalists say that an equity fell to $76 from $110, they invite confusion.) And the much-derided passive voice can make a passage flow more smoothly by preserving the ideal order of old information, then new. In the last third of the book Mr Pinker trades lab coat for a blue pencil, wading into the battles over usage. As a linguist he is a “descriptivist”, believing that the mass of speakers, not a minority of experts, make the rules. Many so-called rules are superstitious that good writers routinely ignore. Readers should feel free to split infinitives, end sentences with prepositions, use “than” followed by an accusative like “him”, or come home from work and tell their spouses “Honey, it's me.” Mr Pinker even offers an elegant defence of the despised “very unique”. But he also takes a turn as a “prescriptivist” (or stickler), pointing to rules that readers really should master for formal writing. Some have a logic in the grammar, like the correct use of “whom”. Some are arbitrary (like the distinction between uninterested and disinterested), but are nonetheless observed by the most careful writers and should be emulated. Some usages just annoy Mr Pinker；he knows that singular “data” is widespread, even among scientists, but he declares himself in a “fussy minority” of holdouts. Good writing is not easy. In one of Mr Pinker's many clever metaphors, a good piece of writing is like the perfect souffle appearing in a spotless kitchen at the end of a cooking show：“The messy work has been done beforehand and behind the scenes.” Gentle humour accompanies Mr Pinker's good sense throughout the book, an antidote to bestselling, operatically irate usage guides that disparage those who disagree as idiots or barbarians. Mr Pinker explains eloquently not just what to do, but also why.
