Building upon earlier guides, such as Strunk & White's The Elements of Style and Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, it applies science to the process of writing, and explains its prescriptions by citing studies in related fields – e.g., grammatical phenomena, mental dynamics, and memory load – as well as history and criticism, to "distinguish the rules that enhance clarity, grace, and emotional resonance from those that are based on myths and misunderstandings".

Style manuals that are innocent of linguistics are crippled in dealing with the aspect of writing that evokes the most emotion: correct and incorrect usage.

They have absorbed a vast inventory of words, idioms, constructions, tropes, and rhetorical tricks, and with them a sensitivity to how they mesh and how they clash.

But knowing the hallmarks of classic style will make anyone a better writer, and it is "the strongest cure for the disease that enfeebles academic, bureaucratic, corporate, legal, and official prose".

How to ensure that readers will grasp the topic, get the point, keep track of the players, and see how one idea follows from another – Even if every sentence in a text is crisp, lucid, and well formed, a succession of them can feel choppy, disjointed, unfocused, incoherent.

A subset of these conventions is less widespread and natural, but has become accepted by a smaller community of literate speakers for use in public forums such as government, journalism, literature, business, and academia.

Pinker includes a short guide to a hundred of the most commonly raised issues of grammar, word usage, and punctuation.

The Sense of Style won Plain English Campaign's International Award for 2014,[2] and was ranked among the best books of 2014 by The Economist,[3] The Sunday Times,[4] and Amazon.