Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care?

In The Sense of Style, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking the usage guide for the twenty-first century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose.

In this short, cheerful, and eminently practical book, Pinker shows how writing depends on imagination, empathy, coherence, grammatical knowhow, and an ability to savor and reverse engineer the good prose of others. He replaces dogma about usage with reason and evidence, allowing writers and editors to apply the guidelines judiciously, rather than robotically, being mindful of what they are designed to accomplish.

Filled with examples of great and gruesome prose, Pinker shows us how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right.

An American dictionary--in the Oxford tradition. Produced by Oxford's U.S. Dictionaries Program, and drawing on the expertise of scores of American scholars and advisors, The New Oxford American Dictionary sets the standard of excellence for lexicography in this country.

Here is the most accurate and richly descriptive picture of American English ever offered in any dictionary. Oxford's American editors drew on our 200-million-word databank of contemporary North American English, plus the unrivaled citation files of the world-renowned Oxford English Dictionary. We started with American evidence--an unparalleled resource unique to Oxford. Our staff logged more than 50 editor-years, checking every entry and every definition.

Oxford's ongoing North American Reading Program, begun in the early 1980s, keeps our lexicographers in touch with fresh evidence of our language and usage--in novels and newspapers, in public records and magazines. To provide unprecedented clarity, the entries are organized around core meanings, eliminating clutter and confusion, especially in longer entries.

Rather than a litany of numbered senses, the structure of each entry plainly shows the major meaning or meanings of the word, plus any related senses, supplemented by illustrative, in-context examples of actual usage.

In short, The New Oxford American Dictionary is designed to serve the user clearly, simply, and quickly, with a full measure of information value and precise guidance. Truly a revolution in the art and craft of dictionary-making, it provides the in-depth and up-to-date coverage that all users need and expect--for reading and study, for technical terms, for language guidance. It continues the tradition of scholarship and lexicographic excellence that are the hallmarks of every Oxford dictionary.