Years ago, in Hollywood, someone once remarked that the amount of bad screenplay writing increased with the advent of the copy machine.  The same claim was later made when word processing and screenwriting software came along.

The fact is there is a lot of bad writing that goes on in many arenas.  Today much of the blame gets heaped on email, or texting, or technology, or just “kids today.”   The real issues are more nuanced, more complex, and not quite as rigid as some might wish.

These are some of the conclusions of Harvard Professor Steven Pinker in his new book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Persons Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

My conversation with Steven Pinker: