One of the reasons I want examples is because I think this post is not a great characterization of the kind of writing endorsed in Sense of Style. Based on this post, I would be somewhat surprised if the author had read the book in any detail, but maybe I misremember things or I am missing something.
[I typed all the quotes in manually while reading my ebook, so there are likely errors]
Self-aware style and signposting
Chapter 1 begins:
“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.” In dark moments while writing this book, I sometimes feared that Wilde might be right.
This seems… pretty self-aware to me? He says outright that a writer should refer to themself sometimes:
Often the pronouns I, me, and you are not just harmless but downright helpful. They simulate a conversation, as classic style recommends, and they are gifts to the memory-challenged reader.
He doesn’t recommend against signposting, he just argues that inexperienced writers often overdo it:
Like all writing decisions, the amount of signposting requires judgement and compromise: too much, and the reader bogs down in reading the signposts; too little, and she has no idea where she is being led.
At the end of the first chapter, he writes:
In this chapter I have tried to call your attention to many of the writerly habits that result in soggy prose: metadiscourse, signposting, hedging, apologizing, professional narcissism, clichés, mixed metaphors, metaconcepts, zombie nouns, and unnecessary passives. Writers who want to invigorate their prose could could try to memorize that list of don’ts. But it’s better to keep in mind the guiding metaphor of classic style: a writer, in conversation with a reader, directs the reader’s gaze to something in the world. Each of the don’ts corresponds to a way in which a writer can stray from this scenario.
Hedging
Pinker does not recommend that writers “eliminate hedging”, but he does advise against “compulsive hedging” and contrasts this with what he calls “qualifying”:
Sometimes a writer has no choice but to hedge a statement. Better still, the writer can qualify the statement, that is, spell out the circumstances in which it does not hold, rather than leaving himself an escape hatch or being coy about whether he really means it.
Concepts about concepts
In the section that OP’s “don’t use concepts about concepts” section seems to be based on, Pinker contrasts paragraphs with and without the relevant words:
What are the prospects for reconciling a prejudice reduction model of change, designed to get people to like one another more, with a collective action model of change, designed to ignite struggles to achieve intergroup equality?
vs
Should we try to change society by reducing prejudice, that is, by getting people to like one another? Or should we encourage disadvantaged groups to struggle for equality through collective action? Or can we do both?
My reading of Pinker is not that he’s saying you can’t use those words or talk about the things they represent. He’s objecting to a style of writing that is clearly (to me) bad and misuse of those words is what makes it bad.
Talk about the subject, not about research about the subject
I don’t know where this one even came from, because Pinker does this all the time, including in The Sense of Style. When explaining the curse of knowledge in chapter 3, he describes lots of experiments:
When experimental volunteers are given a list of anagrams to unscramble, some of which are easier than others because the answers were shown to them beforehand, they rate the ones that were easier for them (because they’d seen the answers) to be magically easier for everyone.
Classic Style vs Self-Aware Style
Also a nitpick about terminology. OP writes:
Pinker contrasts “classic style” with what he calls “postmodern style” — where the author explicitly refers to the document itself, the readers, the authors, any uncertainties, controversies, errors, etc. I think a less pejorative name for “postmodern style” would be “self-aware style”.
Pinker contrasts classic style with three or four other styles, one of which is postmodern style, and the difference between classic style and postmodern style is not whether the writer explicitly refers to themself or the document:
[Classic style and two other styles] differ from self-conscious, relativistic, ironic, or postmodern styles, in which “the writer’s chief, if unstated, concern is to escape being convicted of philosophical naiveté about his own enterprise.” As Thomas and Turner note, “When we open a cookbook, we completely put aside—and expect the author to put aside—the kind of question that leads to the heart of philosophic and religious traditions. Is it possible to talk about cooking? Do eggs really exist? Is food something about which knowledge is possible? Can anyone else ever tell us anything true about cooking? … Classic style similarly puts aside as inappropriate philosophical questions about its enterprise. If it took those questions up, it could never get around to treating its subject, and its purpose is exclusively to treat its subject.
(Note the implication that if philosophy or writing or epistemology or whatever is the subject, then you may write about it without going against the guidelines of classic style)
Huh, this was a great comment. I had read Sense of Style a while ago, and do share many of the OPs complaints about other writing advice, so I did confabulate that Sense of Style was giving the kind of advice the OP argues against, but this comment has convinced me that I was wrong.
I agree that Pinker’ advice is moderate — e.g. he doesn’t prohibit authors from self-reference.
But this isn’t because classic style is moderate — actually classic style is very strict — e.g. it does prohibit authors from self-reference.
Rather, Pinker’s advice is moderate because he weakly endorses classic style. His advice is “use classic style except in rare situations where this would be bad on these other metric.
If I’ve read him correctly, then he might agree with all the limitations of classic style I’ve mentioned.
(But maybe I’ve misread Pinker. Maybe he endorses classic style absolutely but uses “classic style” to refer to a moderate set of rules.)
I agree that classic style as described by Thomas and Turner is a less moderate and more epistemically dubious way of writing, compared to what Pinker endorses. For example, from chapter 1 of Clear and Simple as the Truth:
Classic style is focused and assured. Its virtues are clarity and simplicity; in a sense so are its vices. It declines to acknowledge ambiguities, unessential qualifications, doubts, or other styles.
...
The style rests on the assumption that it is possible to think disinterestedly, to know the results of disinterested thought, and to present them without fundamental distortion....All these assumptions may be wrong, but they help to define a style whose usefulness is manifest.
I also agree that it is a bad idea to write in a maximally classic style in many contexts. But I think that many central examples of classic style writing are:
Not in compliance with the list of rules given in this post
Better writing than most of what is written on LW
It is easy to find samples of writing used to demonstrate characteristics of classic style in Pure and Simple as the Truth that use the first person, hedge, mention the document or the reader, or use the words listed in the “concepts about concepts” section. (To this post’s credit, it is easy to get the impression that classic style does outright exclude these things, because Thomas and Turner, using classic style, do not hedge their explicit statements about what is or is not classic style presumably because they expect the reader to see this clearly through examples and elaboration.)
Getting back to my initial comment, it is not clear to me what kind of writing this post is actually about. It’s hard to identify without examples, especially when the referenced books on style do not seem to agree with what the post is describing.
One of the reasons I want examples is because I think this post is not a great characterization of the kind of writing endorsed in Sense of Style. Based on this post, I would be somewhat surprised if the author had read the book in any detail, but maybe I misremember things or I am missing something.
[I typed all the quotes in manually while reading my ebook, so there are likely errors]
Self-aware style and signposting
Chapter 1 begins:
This seems… pretty self-aware to me? He says outright that a writer should refer to themself sometimes:
He doesn’t recommend against signposting, he just argues that inexperienced writers often overdo it:
At the end of the first chapter, he writes:
Hedging
Pinker does not recommend that writers “eliminate hedging”, but he does advise against “compulsive hedging” and contrasts this with what he calls “qualifying”:
Concepts about concepts
In the section that OP’s “don’t use concepts about concepts” section seems to be based on, Pinker contrasts paragraphs with and without the relevant words:
vs
My reading of Pinker is not that he’s saying you can’t use those words or talk about the things they represent. He’s objecting to a style of writing that is clearly (to me) bad and misuse of those words is what makes it bad.
Talk about the subject, not about research about the subject
I don’t know where this one even came from, because Pinker does this all the time, including in The Sense of Style. When explaining the curse of knowledge in chapter 3, he describes lots of experiments:
Classic Style vs Self-Aware Style
Also a nitpick about terminology. OP writes:
Pinker contrasts classic style with three or four other styles, one of which is postmodern style, and the difference between classic style and postmodern style is not whether the writer explicitly refers to themself or the document:
(Note the implication that if philosophy or writing or epistemology or whatever is the subject, then you may write about it without going against the guidelines of classic style)
Huh, this was a great comment. I had read Sense of Style a while ago, and do share many of the OPs complaints about other writing advice, so I did confabulate that Sense of Style was giving the kind of advice the OP argues against, but this comment has convinced me that I was wrong.
I agree that Pinker’ advice is moderate — e.g. he doesn’t prohibit authors from self-reference.
But this isn’t because classic style is moderate — actually classic style is very strict — e.g. it does prohibit authors from self-reference.
Rather, Pinker’s advice is moderate because he weakly endorses classic style. His advice is “use classic style except in rare situations where this would be bad on these other metric.
If I’ve read him correctly, then he might agree with all the limitations of classic style I’ve mentioned.
(But maybe I’ve misread Pinker. Maybe he endorses classic style absolutely but uses “classic style” to refer to a moderate set of rules.)
I agree that classic style as described by Thomas and Turner is a less moderate and more epistemically dubious way of writing, compared to what Pinker endorses. For example, from chapter 1 of Clear and Simple as the Truth:
I also agree that it is a bad idea to write in a maximally classic style in many contexts. But I think that many central examples of classic style writing are:
Not in compliance with the list of rules given in this post
Better writing than most of what is written on LW
It is easy to find samples of writing used to demonstrate characteristics of classic style in Pure and Simple as the Truth that use the first person, hedge, mention the document or the reader, or use the words listed in the “concepts about concepts” section. (To this post’s credit, it is easy to get the impression that classic style does outright exclude these things, because Thomas and Turner, using classic style, do not hedge their explicit statements about what is or is not classic style presumably because they expect the reader to see this clearly through examples and elaboration.)
Getting back to my initial comment, it is not clear to me what kind of writing this post is actually about. It’s hard to identify without examples, especially when the referenced books on style do not seem to agree with what the post is describing.