Harvard Professor Explains The Rules of Writing — Steven Pinker

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

• Bad writing is not primarily “malice”; it’s mostly the “curse of knowledge.”

  • People who are experts often forget what their audience doesn’t know.
  • This leads to writing that assumes shared background, producing jargon, acronyms, unexplained abstractions, and missing:
    • what problem is being solved
    • why it matters

• A key alternative explanation: cognitive/communication incompetence, not stupidity.

  • Even brilliant experts can write badly when they don’t model the reader’s perspective.
  • The related maxim:
    • “Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.”
  • “Curse of knowledge” is connected to:
    • Ego-centrism
    • Lack of a theory of mind (difficulty modeling others’ mental states)

• Empathy is necessary but insufficient—use real readers to test clarity.

  • The practical method is to show drafts to people outside the author’s narrow expertise.
  • Examples of helpful readers:
    • A parent (illustrates that smart generalists may still not share specialized knowledge)
    • Editors (smart, but not field-specialists)
    • Friends from other disciplines
    • Academics in adjacent fields
  • Insight: even within academia, people can be “insular” and unintelligible once outside their small jargon circle.

• Good writing is guided by how the brain understands: make ideas “seeable.”

  • Understanding isn’t just word comprehension; language conveys ideas that are often:
    • visual, sensory, emotional, bodily
    • conceptual, or motoric
  • Therefore, good writing helps the reader form mental images.
  • Avoid discussing ideas at an abstract level when readers can’t “see” them (e.g., paradigms/frameworks as mere labels).
  • Prefer concrete references, vivid metaphors, and examples.

Writing technique #1: Get into the reader’s head—then get feedback from real humans

• Identify what they know/don’t know
• Use flesh-and-blood readers to validate clarity (not just self-checking or “educated guessing”)

Writing technique #2: Use concreteness and imagery to reduce abstraction

• Treat language as an engine for mental imagery.
• Use:
  • Visual metaphors
  • Sound/poetic techniques (euphony, rhythm, alliteration)
  • Examples that “pin down” meaning

Generalizations and examples must work together

• Generalizations without examples are useless (they erase detail and precision).
• Examples alone can also fail without a guiding general statement.
• Model: a “trade-off between context and compression”
  • Examples = context
  • Generalizations = compression
• A good explanation often alternates:
  1. Generalization (“what this means”)
  2. Examples (“what it looks like”)
  3. Returns to meaning (“now you understand the point”)

Words and meanings drift over time; language can be treated as “fossils of history”

• Examples of semantic drift:
  • “Adultery” historically relates to “adulterate,” but the connection is no longer obvious
  • Compound words like “olive oil” and “baby oil” reflect relationships that aren’t always logically compositional today
• Takeaway: etymology can reveal why surface meanings mislead—and why examples still matter.

Pleasure and aesthetics are part of good writing (not just correctness)

Writing should cultivate:

• Euphony (pleasant sound)
• Prosody/smoothness (read aloud; sentences should “flow”)
• Rhythm (disrupting beats too much can harm reading)
• Avoiding unpleasant sound clusters
• Alliteration and other stylistic spark (but not forced)

Practical tip: read your draft aloud (or even mumble it) to test prosody and flow.

Why academics write badly (and why it’s wasteful)

• Costs
  • Readers must re-read paragraphs multiple times to decipher meaning
  • Misunderstanding risk increases
  • Time could be used for better communication or for “pleasure and beauty”
• Strong motivation
  • As a language researcher, it’s frustrating when people who study comprehension produce hard-to-read prose.

Children and humor highlight what “fresh” communication looks like

• Children explain in a fresh, visual, non-jargony way because they haven’t absorbed the same abstractions and clichés.
• Guiding idea (attributed quote): “Listen to children; they haven’t forgotten how to see.”
• Humor principle:
  • Humor depends on freshness and timing
  • Overused jokes stop being funny
  • Wit relates to brevity:
    • “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
    • “Omit needless words.” (E.B. White / The Elements of Style)
• Brevity improves both:
  • Cognitive load (fewer words/syllables to process)
  • Aesthetic impact (precision, fewer clichés)

Older, “classic” writing can feel more beautiful and vivid—even if harder

• Reasons suggested:
  • Stronger training in classics
  • Less reliance on modern abstractions and clichés
  • New ideas required more metaphor and concrete framing (less “canned language”)
• Modern trends (“informalization”/democratization):
  • Less hierarchy in speech and dress
  • Less “fancy” style; more value on authenticity and spontaneity
• Result: modern prose can seem less reverent and poetic, more plain.

How LLMs affect writing

• Strengths
  • Often clearer than academic jargon
  • Sentence structure tends to be orderly (intro → body → conclusion)
  • Reads as “well-written” superficially
• Weaknesses
  • Generic, prosaic, formulaic
  • Feels like recognizable “LLM output”
  • Not designed for freshness/style (can be improved with prompting, but not fundamentally guaranteed)
• Speculation on why LLM prose sounds “good”:
  • Fine-tuning with human feedback
  • Similarity to visual morphing: composites can appear more “pleasant/attractive” than individual inputs

If rewriting books today with LLMs, Pinker’s likely adjustment

• He would likely give more weight to:
  • Pattern extraction from massive input
  • Models inferring structure from large corpora
• He still argues human learning differs:
  • Children learn in a situated world with interaction, not only text consumption.

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Methodology / instruction list (detailed)

“Curse of knowledge” mitigation (how to write for readers you can’t fully see)

• Identify the reader’s knowledge gaps
  • Ask: what do they know, what do they not know, and where are they coming from?
  • Beware assumptions that feel obvious to you.
• Write with empathy, then verify with real feedback
  • Imagine what a non-expert would find confusing.
  • But don’t stop at imagination—get a flesh-and-blood reader.
• Test drafts with people outside your specialization
  • Use generalists (e.g., a highly educated parent not trained in your field)
  • Use editors (smart but not necessarily your specialty)
  • Use cross-disciplinary readers (e.g., economist, historian, political scientist, evolutionary biologist)
  • Recognize even “academics” can be insular across subfields.

Clarity through concreteness and imagery

• Prefer concrete references over abstract placeholders
  • Don’t say “paradigm/framework/concept” when you can show what it looks like or what happens.
• Add imagery readers can mentally simulate
  • Turn statements into images, actions, sensory/emotional/bodily experiences.
• Use visual metaphors and vivid phrasing
  • When possible, replace technical terms with image-driven language.
• Use a “for example” strategy
  • Generalize, then follow with a concrete example.
  • Avoid “plausible nodding”—examples ensure understanding.

Structure of explanation: generalization ↔ example balance

• Generalizations
  • State the compression: the rule/principle you’re claiming.
• Examples
  • Provide context: the specific case that makes the generalization real.
• Iterate the balance
  • Good communication is a “swing/dance” between compression and context.

Pro/phonetic and aesthetic checks (sound and rhythm)

• Read aloud
  • If you can’t articulate pros smoothly, your reader likely won’t either.
• Check rhythm and pacing
  • Disrupting rhythm too much can harm reading.
• Manage sound quality
  • Avoid too much of unpleasant consonant clusters or sibilance in a row.
• Use alliteration sparingly
  • Small amounts can improve flow; too much can feel forced.

Brevity practice

• Omit needless words
  • Condense when possible, especially for constrained formats.
• Use compression under constraints
  • Cutting to a maximum word count can improve quality by forcing precision and reducing clichés.
• Accept that brevity improves clarity and aesthetics
  • Fewer words can reduce cognitive load and make phrasing more concrete.

Humor alignment with writing craft

• Keep humor fresh
  • Avoid strained or over-repeated lines that trigger groans.
• Brevity strengthens punchlines
  • Don’t telegraph; pace matters.
• Match the principle to writing
  • Humor shares the same craft: concision, timing, appropriateness.

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Speakers / sources featured

Speakers

• Steven Pinker (Harvard professor; author; interview subject)

Interviewer / on-screen narrator

• Unspecified interviewer / YouTube host
  • Introduces Pinker and asks questions (not named in subtitles)

Other cited authors / sources

• Richard Lederer
  • Quoted via a whimsical list/wit about word formation errors
• E.B. White
  • Via The Elements of Style (“omit needless words”)
• The Elements of Style (William Strunk Jr. / E.B. White)
  • Style manual referenced; specific attribution partly in subtitles
• Shakespeare (Hamlet)
  • “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
• Thomas Edison
  • Quoted via Edison’s writing mentioned in Enlightenment Now
• Herbert Spencer
  • Referenced as an example of clear, classic writing
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
  • Referenced
• Charles Darwin
  • Referenced

Named public figures / cultural references

• TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)
• Art Linkletter (Kids Say the Darnest Things)
• Johnny Carson (The Tonight Show; referenced as featuring kids’ answers)
• Humor/collection referenced from a Twitter bio (author not named in subtitles)
• CEO / Rockefeller Center / John D. Rockefeller
  • Referenced with a quote about society and the good life