I've summarized Pinker's advice from this and the "Sense of Style" video: - Be logical by starting small and progressing larger: o “kit and caboodle” o each point within a paragraph builds upon the previous - Show, rather than tell; metaphors and similes are helpful if they are descriptive and memorable. - Even academic writing needs to be visually pleasing - vary your sentence and paragraph lengths; don’t appear large and bloated. - Be direct. There is no need to apologize or “hedge your bets” with words like: presumably, somewhat, fairly, to some extent… o “[Give] the reader credit for knowing that many concepts are hard to define, and many controversies are hard to resolve; the reader is there to see what the writer will do about it.” - Be careful with all adverbs - many are vague or confusing. - Don’t over-use the passive voice; e.g. don’t say, “Mistakes were made.” - It’s okay to use singular ‘they’, and we don’t have to worry too much about many other prescribed rules.

My first encounter with startlingly good writing in the sciences was in our high school library where I found some books by Harvard Psychologist B.F. Skinner. I had no idea who he was, but I knew I wanted to learn to write like him. I also discovered that my tabula was not as rasa as my teachers thought it was.

And now, Orwell's rules: Orwell, George. 1946. Politics and the English Language. “[O]ne can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases: “(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

I randomly start this video and cannot stop listening to the speaker. It's awesome!

42:15 is a persistent grating point with my friend and me where any time it's used I hear a litany about her father this her father that. Thank you for your presentations. Your very informative and I enjoy listening to your many lectures.

What a wonderfully clear and beautiful mind Steven Pinker has! As Richard Dawkins once said "I think its high time the Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to a scientist and no other will be more deserving than Steven Pinker"

I loved this talk.

I loved watching it. Very informative and intellectual.

Thank you Steve Pinker!

"flaunt the rules": a question from the audience at around 1:05:00 and Pinker didn't say a thing. What a nice guy.

Kudos to Steven Pinker! I've had great pleasure listening to this conversation.

A charming talk, but I think it is time we discussed Steven Pinker's hair. Is it entirely appropriate to champion a man's ideas when he has chosen to adopt a coiffure that comes off as the unholy alliance between a Los Angeles pornographer and a mid-ranking magician. It seems to have a life of it's own. I imagine it feeds off other haircuts, to become ever more powerful.

Finally, a great appreciative reaction am I receiving in my being

Thank you so much, quite an inspiring discussion.

I highly recommend Pinker's book, I've been plodding through it and his previous opus (The better angels of our nature), and he is magnificent educator. What I love most about the book on writing are some of the horrific examples he dredges up from academic journals or creates himself to make a point, much better than the do's or don't's approach.

Simplicity requires an effort to make the most out of the fewest words that are absolutely necessary to get your point across with the utmost clarity.

This is an absolutely fabulous talk. I especially liked the cutaneous rabbit example. 'Tap on the wrist' while sounding to the misguided as not a very scientific phrase, is actually much better in terms of facilitating understanding than 'stimulus' which could mean anything that fits under the umbrella of stimulus! E.g. a punch in the face, whilst having your labia zapped by electric crabs, were electric crabs real.

Whatever... I'm still not going to use a preposition to end a sentence with.

I sat in on one of his lectures once. As someone who's fluent in two other languages, I think he tends to overgeneralize a bit (as does Chomsky) by placing way too much emphasis on the English language. Plus he's cocky as fuck. But I gotta say "The Sense of Style" is by far one of the most impressive books I've ever read on writing.

Very refreshing discussion.

Rules of language are not only relative to the goal of the writer but also context and content.

this is so interesting! this is my first time seeing this show!

"As there was a stream of people pouring into a shabby house not far from the entrance, he waited until they had made their way in, ..." --Charles Dickens, "Nicholas Nickleby"

Brilliant discussion, I learned lots from it

Classical style - joint attention, announcing one’s unique vision, academic defending oneself against attack in one’s field.

Speaker does much better when taking qs This video was helpful to me, thank you

My pet peeves are the shifts in the usage of "finished" vs. "done," and "lesser" vs. "fewer."

The problem with ‘Hopefully’ - and other adverbs that set a mood at the start of a clause, eg ‘Sadly’ - is that it looks like an adverb unattached to any verb. This can lead to confusion: “Sadly, Bill and Lucy are emigrating”. The speaker may be sad about it, but Bill or Lucy can’t wait to go. Perhaps such usage could become fully accepted if we all agree that after a ‘Sadly’ or ‘Hopefully’ there’s a tacit ‘I’m telling you that’, so that the adverb is understood to be attached to the tacit verb ‘telling’ or ‘reporting’.

Brilliant man I love his concept on the biology of philosophy the dissecting ofVerbal mental intelligence was absolutely wonderfully achieved it makes the concept of the whole conversation it Gave me more of a three dimensional view on the topic nicely worded nicely thought out

Pinker is one of my favorite intellectuals.

Only came here for Ian.

I first heard that Joyce "yes" quote in a movie, where the teacher that quoted it, paused in the right places to make it understandable. In essence, she put punctuation in the quote. I like the way she said it. However, I just read the quote, and couldn't understand it without punctuation.

34:15 Really Steven? Are you sure? I think you'll find the order in which words appear has much more to do with the ease with which they can be spoken, the stressed syllables within those words and plain old convention. I give you: Bacon and eggs - bangers and mash - bubble and squeak - bucket and spade - fingers and thumbs - Jekyll and Hyde - wattle and daub - apples and pears - husband and wife - mother and child - strawberries and cream - hammer and tongue - needle and thread - sugar and spice - sweetness and light - Netflix and chill - etc. etc. etc. For every 'salt and pepper' there is a 'rosemary and thyme'. For every 'Simon and Garfunkel' there is a 'Sonny and Cher'. For every 'John, Paul, George and Ringo' there is a 'Crosby, Stills and Nash'.

I’ve noticed this when Pinker gives talks. He repeats - word for word, phrase for phrase - himself all the time: his lectures are always the same, and his writings follow suit. That being said, I enjoyed this discussion :)

In late elementary school, the mere mention of the word 'language' which meant the English language in writing, reading, and spelling as well as proper grammar, was greeted by and large throughout the classroom, a response akin to the though of eating unpleasant tasting food.

Steven Pinker's hair are in the old-fashioned style of the 18th century, when philosophers wore curly powdered wigs.

Exactly I love this guy

I like this speaker's emphasis on clear and suitable communication rather than on pedantries past and present. In my own writing, I strive intently for attaining the degree of precision or of inclusion or generality that I seek to convey. Writing about music so much, an intangible subject in so many (but not all) ways, this is a constant struggle, but it is one that can give much satisfaction when I think that I manage it well.

I have a 1923-dated edition of Fowlers English Usage which pours scorn on those who criticise split infinitives.

Great talk

I don't think Pinker could write good fiction. But he has fabulous hair. So he's got that going for him.

I can't believe this man is 60.. some people start forgetting their grandchildren's names at 60....

The key to good writing, as I learned in a college writing class, in MISS: Make It Simple, Stupid.

That god damn Ulysess spoiler!

Thanks. Elucidating talk.

Great stuff

I sense an apparent tendency to flex usage in some places but not others, a contradiction in fact because, why flex split infinitives but "unflex" meanings, say of words such as aggravate...

I like how the guy who asked the last question, concerned with the so called decline in language, was himself a very poor communicator.

I just checked my copy of Webster's Dictionary and one meaning of enormity is to denote huge size. So part of the problem would seem to lie with the gatekeepers of the language.

Brilliant

My father always told me to think before you speak somethings never change I’m trying now

I love you too

McEwan, I believe he is one of the most important writers today. Both men are brilliant.

I still can't connect my printer to the internet - and I am a scientist

Somerset Maugham taught himself to write by first reading essays and novels by Swift and Addison, then writing, in his own words, the sense of what they wrote. He would then compare his and their efforts and note where he fell short.

Steven Pinker seems like a lovely human being

------------------ A User's Manual For The Aptitude ------------ Good writing is auditory as it is visual. If it engages the ear so that a definite voice is heard in the head, the writer's vision transfers more directly. It's how you would speak if you could with a miraculous lack of awkwardness. No less than poetry, prose is music refined from improvisation into something with a plan there's no time to build in the ordinary course of speech, only less regularly recurring in geometry of sound, less like a grid and more like a river system, and comparably more digressive. But the more you polish it for efficiency, the more it loses power, just as the more it's cut the more ponderously it moves. At least that's how it behaves when complete enough to seem alive. If agility were all that would be the end to it. To be alive it needs also the precision that comes only of well-assimilated memory, of populations more than digested, of effects remembered from forgotten phrasings, of experience made of many vicarious outings as if one were a lord who in reading had sent forth numerous vassals to report upon the world and everything in it, including themselves, without regard to time. Then allusion can take on huge dimensions, such as if I wrote a satire as if I were the Alexander Pope of prose, borrowing the manner of his magic for my own ends, pretending to be him and in the process becoming a little more like him but with a difference that depends on my own personality, the innate part that doesn't change however age or dress or fashion alters all the rest. The clothes grow-in only so far if one has the stuff to be at all good at it, and that takes a core tremendous in stability. No one can teach that. It's the perennial lament of the perennially bad writer, and the perennial ecstasy of one kind of exquisiteness becoming another, thence another's. Genius hops around through the centuries making different alliances between genes and memes as it goes, adapting circumstance to itself rather than vice-versa. So it isn't individual if it's rugged, which is why there can't be an -ism to it in life or art or an artful life. It's something that persists by means invisible without this playful science, and is ever invisible to whom looks at one's own senses yields little more than passing vertigo.

however! love this part!

I feel sorry for the young woman asking Pinker about English usage and twice using "flaunt" when she meant "flout".

Another one is ‘differentiate’ meaning the application of a rate of change and not a verb to ‘distinguish’.

I enjoyed Steven Pinker speaking, but when Ian McEwan started interviewing him, I became very irritated at McEwan's stumbling and halting speaking. When Pinker answered him, the difference was amazing. Pinker gave his thoughts without any stumbling or seemingly needing to think about it. Another thing that bothered me about McEwan was that I very seldom could understand what he was trying to say. Pinker was clear by comparison, even though I don't know the meaning of many of his words.

@Lucifer Wang: you asked about the style guide referred to by McEwan at the end of the talk. He mentions "Burchfield's revision of Fowler", by which he means the third edition of H.W. Fowler's "Modern English Usage", as revised and edited by R.W. Burchfield: www.amazon.com/The-Fowlers-Modern-English-Usage/dp/0198691262

Steven, I agree with your candy/pencil box example and the metaphor "lunatics running the asylum". Writing (or speaking) fails as an instrument of communication when the writer (speaker) does not understand: How to address and motivate a reader (audience) directly and intrinsically How to explain terms and phrases, examples, metaphors, etc. based on "Eingangsvoraussetzungen", meaning the different entry levels, the variance of pre-existing knowledge - what the audience does not already know and what they really want to learn from this lecture or book. Finally, how to create and maintain intrinsic attention levels (to enter a classroom with the word "attention" is military jargon) "Attention class!" does not do any good, rather the opposite. You wouldn't start a book or article that way, because people won't take you serious, unless you have already established your authority. Teachers who demand attention have not established authority yet, they try it with this urgent demand but will never make it. That can have reasons in lack of shrewdness, integrity, fairness, knowledge, planning, methodical progress, etc. This methodical progress called "red thread" must maintain the student's or reader's interest in each and every lesson, lecture, book, article, etc. I honestly miss it at the highest level of intellectuals as well as in schools. Being savvy alone is by far not sufficient to be a good teacher or write a good book. Students start as kids with an incredible urge to accumulate knowledge. Schools and even parents systematically destroy that urge and by the time a student starts college he is in most cases already reduced to intellectual rubbish. He may have learned not to object, to avoid ISS, but he never learned how to form independence and opinions. That's what you need out there in life. Teachers must accept that their opinion about a topic is not the holy grail. Other opinions create diversity and discussion. They do not undermine authority, they do not suggest you are wrong or bad. The mere fact that they exist shows how good you are, because you allowed them to grow. With regards to the hypothesis "the internet destroys our language skills" - I strongly disagree. I have written my thesis long before the internet at a time when punch cards were about to be replaced by huge magnetic discs for data storage. There were no dictionaries in simple word software, but I noticed the future of education will be increasingly supported by multimedia. Yet, direct human interaction is and will always be a factor for effective education. The internet may reduce social skills. Some media may reduce us to 140 characters, some may even "suspend" opinions tweeted by a president. But they may end like KODAK, if they do not "rethink" their strategies. Let people talk and write - they need it. Who needs film to store images in a digital age. The blame for the undeniable decline of language (as you compared to 70s and 80s) goes hand in hand with the undeniable decline of manners, empathy, dialectic, etc. I remain optimistic. It may swing back when people realize the negative effects of bad education. The black sheep will have to leave the arena for good. Anarchists will admit - there are better ways to communicate and correct problems. Diplomacy will eventually replace wars. Even God may eventually be re-introduced as "reasonable agent of hope". To "boldly go where no-one has gone before" is in my opinion intentionally designed to emphasize the "how" of a journey not the "where" and that's not a grammatical error, it's a pragmatic improvement of "meaning". "Long time no seen" is completely incorrect grammar, but quite clear in its "meaning". The old saying used by sailors comes to mind: "It's about the Journey, not the Destination". The very first thought in good writing like in good leadership seems to be: What's more important? The second: Forget the rest.

Interesting dialogue, though Pinker did most of the talking. It was the people in the audience that intrigued me. Why do people have to be so self-important? The woman who had to say she was from the 'European Commission.' Who cares? And as for the last questioner, he was unbelievable, a complete jerk, an embarrassment. He obviously was bent on showing how much cleverer he was than everyone else in the audience - even than Pinker and McEwan - and made a complete ass of himself. He used the word ‘soritic’ (I had to look it up myself and still couldn’t see how it was relevant in the context of what Pinker was saying) twice when he must have known that hardly anyone in the audience would have known what the word meant. He was probably hoping that Pinker would have to ask him what ‘soritic’ meant, thus making him look good and Pinker look bad. What a contemptible wanker. He even had to use the rare word ‘sanguine’ about Pinker’s approach to language use and writing. He was actually trying to find fault with the whole thrust of what Pinker had been saying but felt compelled to say it in a smart-ass way. Can’t stand people like that.

Can someone please tell me what word Pinker uses at 13:56? It sounds like "con-yu-shente." I can't trigger a result in Merriam-Webster's online site based on any of my attempts at spelling it. Thank you in advance.

Who's to judge?

The guy asking the last question referred to a "serific" problem. Or that's what it sounded like. What does that word mean?

I'm pretty sure Pinker and McEwan had to hold their tongues when a questioner used the phrase "flaunt the rules" instead of flout the rules.

1:17:30 Mr. Pinker, the singular, "they," is perfect. What's interesting here is that it remains an issue for you.

39:18 “The beginning student [...]” (singular) “[...] one of the first things they’re [...]” (plural).

Intelligence Squared team, can you activate the subtitles generated automatically for your videos? PLEASE

What book (written by himself) is he talking about?

loved attonement though it took while to read it

I love Pinker on writing and linguistics, much more than on politics or climate change.

I love constructive criticism I learned from it

Turn this off and get back to writing.

Hopefully, I'll find out eventually what's happening with hopefully.

Don't agree regarding Heart of Darkness. The reader gazes at the distant lights from the dark waters, while a voice speaks of a venture passing madness and savagery. " A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last. "

Audience, Audience, Audience know your audience. How to talk to people 😇

Interesting the example he used of Smarties box and pencils. This is used in Simon Baron-Cohen's book Mindblindness to give one example how autistic people are mindlind (which I disagree, actually).

The cunning, sly, dis-honest uses of words/terms etc are how polticians and the law firms trick the guillable.

Can anyone explain this policy of translating books and leaving numerous quotations untranslated? For instance, I'm reading a book by Frances Yates on the Renaissance and, every now and then, she quotes someone in Italian or some other language, without providing the translation of this quote. Evidently this is common practice, since I come across these frustrations in almost all of my books. I'd still like to know what the Latin inscription says at the beginning of Bloy's "The Woman Who Was Poor", which seems to be from the Office For the Dead, but does not exactly coincide with any translations I see online.

Steven Pinker was too polite to correct the lady who asked when it was OK to flaunt the rules.

12:36 I don't think he's doing that for his advice right there, just imagine what it was before you knew it and there you go boom. I remember when I didn't know stuff and then someone told me and I knew it's like oh that's good to know I was ignorant before. I guess his imagination isn't up to snuff, optimism will only get you so far?

who would you say were the bad brights?

He is a fascinating fella isn't he. Oh, was it terrible of me to write 'fella'? Oh no, should I have used a question mark after that question tag? Oh no. Another interesting and fairly pragmatic talk with him.

A few seconds in I laugh already at his "practical joke", "spatolous gaphiligook" is by itself spatolous gaphiligook (however you spell that)

Very interesting.

Pinker is very cogent, which makes it even more curious to me to reflect that he once characterized music as "auditory cheesecake". It seems that there may be substantial limitations even in the better minds. Perhaps the really curious thing is that once should expect otherwise.

Sick chat lads, literally lovin every second.#prosebros

Did anyone else notice the woman who, at 1:04:20, says 'flaunt the rules', instead of 'flout the rules'?

26:32 By heaven.

Not everyone has the talent of JR Tolkien or imagination of Frank Hubert. The best writing flows like poetry while stirring ones imagination and taking you on an incredible journey while making time stand still. Great writing is rarely appreciated anymore and it is getting harder to make a good living at it being as everyone spends most of their free time on you tube getting their dopamine fix in 30 second bursts.

Wow! This is another 4 years ago " Now I'm really worried about the Twins!"

A breathing comma exists? I've been battling an editor for a year on the need for a breathing comma. It tells the reader, take a breath here, it's not a grammatical rule.

So be it

What's the book Ian McEwan recommends at 1:17:08?

This is to me an important reverie -- didn't find the right term but close enough -- regarding clarity in language. Clarity is the operative word. It was hard for me, growing up in the early '70s, to commit as a linguist to the accelerated pace especially in English which is not my 1st language (no French Academy etc) to the plethora of neologisms as language changed evermore quickly. Disinterested used to mean without prejudice and fortuitous was a synonym for happenstance.. When Sausurre wrote about an entirely new field of study he also thought that in macro terms one would need a new dictionary every 50 yrs or so, which is simply wrong. I was very lucky in my mentors in academe and this is an excellent conversation with Ian McEwan who paradoxically in my view has grown more accessible as time goes by; perhaps I read a lot of Ian McEwan. What is clear is that great writers either in expository mode or fiction write to be understood. Language is precious and not to be trifled with, to use a 19th century conceit. You could write in fiction like a waterfall if you were Charles Dickens but every paragraph would obey internal rules of coherence. Thank you to both participants, an inspiring conversation.

1:09:00 - Generic way of refering to "he / she" is well managed in Hungarian for example. They have the term "ő" and unless specified more precisely it always is genderless.

11:13 ok, haha...yes, I've done that myself...I would never think of it like that...yes...