The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

by Steven Pinker

gems of self-exemplification such as “Write with nouns and verbs,” “Put the emphatic words of a sentence at the end,” and best of all, his prime directive, “Omit needless words.”

As people age, they confuse changes in themselves with changes in the world, and changes in the world with moral decline—the illusion of the good old days.4