Style matters for Harvard professor at public event

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker, award-winning cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Harvard University will be speaking about his new book on writing in the 21^st century at an event on Tuesday 1 September.

Hosted by The University of Manchester and part of the Manchester Literature Festival and European City of Science 2016, Professor Pinker will be drawing on his new book which uses the latest scientific insights to bring us a style and usage guide for the 21st century.

In The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Pinker addresses the fact that the currency of our social and cultural lives is the written word, from Twitter and texting to blogs, e-readers and old-fashioned books.

Drawing on the latest research in linguistics and cognitive science, Steven Pinker replaces the recycled dogma of previous style guides with reason and evidence. His latest book shows why style still matters: in communicating effectively, in enhancing the spread of ideas, in earning a reader's trust and, not least, in adding beauty to the world.

Steven Pinker is an award-winning cognitive scientist and public intellectual, as well as the Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary and the lauded author of bestsellers such as The Language Instinct, Words and Rules, The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and lives in Boston & Truro, Massachusetts.