被誉为“写作圣经”的《风格的要素》（The Element ofStyle，第一版快100年了），在语言心理学家Steven Pinker读来，感觉越来越不是味儿（with a growing sense ofunease）。他在新书The Sense of Style中说，Strunk和White凭直觉理解风格——style，在这儿的意思，可以借牛津词典的解释：a writer's mode of expression considered in regard to clearness, effectiveness, beauty, and the like，与中文常说的“风格”不完全对等——对语法却很没什么感觉（had a tenuousgrasp of grammar）（他们在语法概念上的错误或模糊，就不说了）。他们缺乏语言分析的工具，所以在将直觉变成忠告时，常常徒劳地求助作者的“耳朵”。他们的很多忠告是自相矛盾的，例如，用一个被动语态的句子来攻击被动语态：Many a tame sentence … can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice。George Orwell在Politics and the English Language中也掉进了同样的陷阱：the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active。

  Pinker认为，被动语态不是坏东西。语言学家已然证明，被动结构有着众多不可或缺的功能，它有助于读者的注意和记忆；老练的作者应该知道它们的作用。如果编辑把被动改为主动了，作者应该把它们改回来。（A skilled writer should know what those functions are and push back against copy editors who, under the influence of grammatically naïve style guides, blue-pencil every passive construction they spot into an active one.）

 Pinker是语言心理学家和认知科学家，他职业性地读写作手册，就像植物学家逛花园，化学家进厨房。他认为，那些轻信传统法则的“风格”小册子，很多东西会让人学坏，作者最好别太当真（writers are better off flouting them）。传统风格类图书还忘了一点：语言是随时间变化的，而不是法定的协议：

the orthodox stylebooks are ill equipped to deal withan inescapable fact about language: it changes over time. Language is not aprotocol legislated by an authority but rather a wiki that pools thecontributions of millions of writers and speakers, who ceaselessly bend the language to their needs and who inexorably age, die, and get replaced by their children, who adapt the language in their turn. 

   所以，他的书有一个醒目的副标题：the thinking person’s guide to writing in the 21 century。