We all know what Pinker is trying to tell us, even if his sentences do not add up. But diehard copy editors are the villains here. “We have a body of research on the mental dynamics of reading: the waxing and waning of memory load as readers comprehend a passage, the incrementing of their knowledge as they come to grasp its meaning, the blind alleys that can lead them astray.” Diehard copy editors might itch to change that initial “by” to “with” (infused with what, exactly?), and to point out that blind alleys, by definition, don’t lead anywhere. “Today’s writers are infused by the spirit of scientific skepticism and the ethos of questioning authority,” Pinker writes. Guides tend to fall back on “folklore and myth.” And for what purpose? Grammar busybodies and their “diktats” should be obsolete. Strunk and White had “a tenuous grasp of grammar,” and George Orwell contradicted himself. In a prologue to “The Sense of Style,” subtitled “A Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century,” the brain scientist Steven Pinker explains that he’s been reading style manuals of late, and that they bum him out.
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