Style

The Economist Style Guide: 11th edition

The Economist

 

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

Steven Pinker

Never end a sentence with and.

And never begin one with and either.

Like trying to reduce mathematics to a mere branch of logic as Russell and Whitehead did [didn’t  succeed,in fact],trying to write the rules of English grammar is  difficult

The main reason is that there are no rules.Let me explain.English was spoken for many hundreds of years before it was written down.Or,let’s say all language was originally oral.Eventually some bright person invented an alphabet.This was in the Middle East.Hebrew still uses an alphabet which pre-dates the Greek.Aleph is the first letter.We use it in mathematics to denote infinity as we ran out of Greek  letters and maybe French too.

When I say there are no rules I mean that the language existed for a long time before the development of alphabets and writing.Gradually  language developed and later written language but always there has been change and growth.And who makes the rules? The elite?

So to some extent there is no ultimate form.I  imagine that great writers like Shakespeare add to or influence the language they write in.And other people decide that some forms are better than others.It may be aesthetic;in maths it must be clear;in novels, perhaps dramatic.

Similarly punctuation arrived  only after writing developed.When  you learned to talk you could speak well by the time you went to school but an inverted comma was probably a new notion.We need  such things, sometimes ,to clarify what we mean.But language is still primarily used between people and it is a living being at its best.

Some people mock those who write,

that cat ate it’s dinner.

But  that is related  just to  what is customary:

the cat ate its dinner …. means its own dinner

“The cat ate it’s dinner” means another being called “it”  had its dinner eaten by the cat.Alas.

But usually the context tells us.

“I have lost my head” might confuse some of us.It’s most often a dead metaphor.

I lost my head and told my husband I regretted ever meeting him.But my head was screwed on the right way later.

She lost her head and swore  at the Rabbi who gamely swore back  to keep their friendship alive except it was all in his head.She didn’t even know he was a Rabbi, but believed he was  a soft toy with a missing tee.That’s life.For some.