On Writing and Adding Beauty to the World

Things I learned after reading Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style

I’ve always been convinced that good writing can flip the way the world is perceived. If I think about the people I admire, they all have something in common: they have a way to transmit stories; indelible parts of meaning and hope. But it’s not just about the content of the stories, but also about the words; those invisible strings that provide coherence and beauty.

Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style, is not merely a handbook of word choice, grammar, and punctuation. It’s also a reminder that language is not a protocol, but rather the result of contributions of millions of writers and speakers. Pinker states that writing is an act of pretense. The writer can see something that the reader has not yet noticed, and that’s exactly where the craft begins: by orienting the reader’s gaze so that he can see it for himself.

A writer, like a cinematographer, manipulates the viewer’s perspective on an ongoing story, with the verbal equivalent of camera angles and quick cuts.

The book describes the importance of the classic style, which takes whatever form and whatever length the writer needs to present an interesting truth (it basically makes the reader feel like a genius). But what usually happens in the classrooms of high schools and universities is the exact opposite: students write simple papers with complex words that make it all sound intellectual, reflective, and profound (see what I did here?), while deluding the teacher from the actual content. It is just the consequence of writing about something we’re not necessarily interested in, aiming for a grade that has no intrinsic value.

Not surprisingly enough, high school and college are not the only places where this happens (hint: it’s everywhere in academia). Instead of clarity and simplicity, saying less with more has become the rule.

But writing is an art by itself, and like most things in life, it expresses more with less. It is a reflection of honesty, discovery, and innovation; the most concrete representation of ideas and and convictions. And yet, it should be presented in a concrete, direct way. Leave aside the unnecessary adjetives and the pompous words; tell the true story of the world in the same way you’ll describe a summer day to your nearest friend.

Now, back to the book:

15 practical* lessons I learned after reading The Sense of Style:

When we know something well, we don’t realize how abstractly we think [and write] about it
Make a commitment to the concrete
The human mind can only do a a few things at a time. The order in which information comes in affects how that information is handled.
Brevity is the soul of wit
A sentence beginning with It is or There is is often a candidate for liposuction
Show your draft to someone else, revisit it after some time has passed, and read it aloud — prose that’s hard for you to pronounce will almost certainly he hard for someone else to comprehend.
Mastering the basics of punctuation is nonnegotiable
Inexperienced writers tend to be closer to academics than to journalists
Coherence begins with the writer and reader being clear about the topic
Divulge the point of a text somewhere not too far from the beginning
Select a construction that allows you to end a sentence with a phrase that is heavy or informative [or both]
Look things up
Be sure your arguments are sound
Beware of false dichotomies
Arguments should be based on reason, not people

Writing is an ongoing craft. Sometimes it’s better to follow conventions than to stick to a predetermined set of obsolete rules. Most great writers are great precisely because they break the rules (but in order to break them, they need to know them first).

“Education is an admirable thing”, wrote Oscar Wilde, “but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught”.

Here’s my favorite compilation of advise on writing, by Maria Popova.