Choose Strong
For Tim.
正文
After "Cooked" by Michael Pollan and "Born to Run" by
Christopher McDougal, the book "The Sense of Style: The
Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century!" by
Steven Pinker has recently become another great treat. This
is an English style guide that I can actually enjoy reading.
Given that I love the language and, over the years, have
gathered (but not necessarily finished reading) dozens
of books on its vocabulary, diction, and usage, I'm very
happy to discover Pinker.
The book is fun to read. The examples and illustrations
support the points but that's a given. Many of them are
entertaining and educational in their own right. Take this
poem he quoted on the word "ain't,"
Don't say ain't or your mother will faint.
Your father will fall in a bucket of paint.
Your sister will cry; your brother will die.
Your dog will call the FBI.
this paragraph when explaining "chunking" on page 68,
Chunking is not just a trick for improving memory; it's
the lifeblood of higher intelligence. As children we see
one person hand a cookie to another, and we remember it
as an act of _giving_. One person gives another one a
cookie in exchange for a banana; we chunk the two acts
of giving together and think of the sequence as
_trading_. Person 1 trades a banana to Person 2 for a
piece of shiny metal, because he knows he can trade it
to Person 3 for a cookie; we think of it as _selling_.
Lots of people buying and selling make up a _market_.
Activity aggregated over many markets gets chunked into
_the economy_. ...
or that hiliarious short story he quoted on page 254 to show
traditional rules don't guarantee clarity. My 8-yr-old easily
remembered the poem and recited it with glee. "ain't" has
its merits and its place, as the author states, but it's the
poem that commits the word in my memory because the four
sentences made it fun. I wish I read the chunking
paragraph 6 years ago when I first got interested in
Economics. And that story gives me a good laugh whenever I
revisit the page.
Christopher McDougal, the book "The Sense of Style: The
Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century!" by
Steven Pinker has recently become another great treat. This
is an English style guide that I can actually enjoy reading.
Given that I love the language and, over the years, have
gathered (but not necessarily finished reading) dozens
of books on its vocabulary, diction, and usage, I'm very
happy to discover Pinker.
The book is fun to read. The examples and illustrations
support the points but that's a given. Many of them are
entertaining and educational in their own right. Take this
poem he quoted on the word "ain't,"
Don't say ain't or your mother will faint.
Your father will fall in a bucket of paint.
Your sister will cry; your brother will die.
Your dog will call the FBI.
this paragraph when explaining "chunking" on page 68,
Chunking is not just a trick for improving memory; it's
the lifeblood of higher intelligence. As children we see
one person hand a cookie to another, and we remember it
as an act of _giving_. One person gives another one a
cookie in exchange for a banana; we chunk the two acts
of giving together and think of the sequence as
_trading_. Person 1 trades a banana to Person 2 for a
piece of shiny metal, because he knows he can trade it
to Person 3 for a cookie; we think of it as _selling_.
Lots of people buying and selling make up a _market_.
Activity aggregated over many markets gets chunked into
_the economy_. ...
or that hiliarious short story he quoted on page 254 to show
traditional rules don't guarantee clarity. My 8-yr-old easily
remembered the poem and recited it with glee. "ain't" has
its merits and its place, as the author states, but it's the
poem that commits the word in my memory because the four
sentences made it fun. I wish I read the chunking
paragraph 6 years ago when I first got interested in
Economics. And that story gives me a good laugh whenever I
revisit the page.
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