'Literally,' Awesome!, and Other Trends That Aren't Destroying English

Experimental psychologist Steven Pinker talks about a few cherished grammar rules he'd prefer to see forgotten—and replies to critics of his book The Sense of Style.

Scott PorchDec 30 2014,  - The Atlantic 

Rebecca Goldstein/Wikimedia

As an experimental psychologist, Steven Pinker thinks about writing. As a linguist, he thinks about writing.
In The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, the author and Harvard professor mines both the science of cognitive psychology—how the brain processes language, how we associate words with meanings, etc.—and the art of language to re-engineer the writing guide.
I spoke with Pinker about his new book, his grammar feud with The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller, why the misuse of “literally” doesn’t literally or figuratively drive him crazy, and how italics—as used in the first paragraph of this interview—may be the writing tool you’re not using enough.

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Scott Porch: Do people write the way they talk?

Steven Pinker: Not really. Clearly, there’s overlap and some people write in a more conversational style than others, but it is striking how a transcript of a talk given extemporaneously does not read well on the printed page. I first noticed this when I was a teenager and read the Watergate transcripts—the conversations among Nixon and advisors like Haldeman and Ehrlichman and Mitchell. A number of people at the time who had never seen conversations transcribed were astonished at how difficult they were to interpret.

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