The Sense of Style

Here's a simple fact about writing: it's not natural. Speaking is. We're born with a biological instinct for language. Children babble, then form words, then carry on conversations years before they ever set foot in a classroom. But writing? Writing is a recent invention in human history—barely six thousand years old. It leaves no trace in our genome. It must be laboriously taught and learned, often across an entire lifetime.

This means writing requires something strange: an act of pretense. When you speak to someone face to face, you get instant feedback—raised eyebrows, nods, confused looks, the little "hmm" that tells you to clarify. When you write, you're sending words into a void. You can't see your reader. You can't adjust in real time. So you have to imagine a conversation with someone who isn't there.

That imagined conversation is the foundation of all good writing. And the most effective version of it has a name: Classic Style.

Classic style treats writing as a window onto the world. The writer doesn't perform, doesn't show off, doesn't announce what they're about to do. Instead, they direct the reader's gaze toward something worth seeing. The writer and reader are equals. The writer says, in effect, "Look at this—you'll see it too." The reader's job is to look, not to untangle tangled prose. When classic style works, the reader feels like a genius. When it fails, the reader feels like a dunce.

To see the difference, consider two writers. Physicist Brian Greene explains the theory of multiple universes with remarkable clarity. He uses concrete language, vivid metaphors, and sentences that unfold naturally. You don't need a PhD in physics to follow him. He makes complex ideas feel accessible. His prose is a window.

Now consider literary theorist Judith Butler. Her academic writing is famously dense—long, abstract sentences packed with jargon, qualifications, and metaconcepts. You can read a paragraph and still not be sure what was said. The prose calls attention to itself. It's a wall, not a window.

Both writers are brilliant. Both know their subjects deeply. So why does one produce clear prose and the other impenetrable prose?

The answer is the curse of knowledge.

The curse of knowledge is simple: once you know something, it's almost impossible to imagine what it's like not to know it. You've chunked the information into a single mental package. You forget which steps are obvious and which are mysterious to someone outside your field. You use jargon without realizing it's jargon. You skip explanations that seem unnecessary to you but are essential to your reader.

This is the single best explanation for why good people write bad prose. It's not malice. It's not stupidity. It's the curse of knowledge, and it afflicts every writer.

Here's how it works in practice. Experts chunk information into abstract terms. A physicist thinks "spacetime curvature." A biologist thinks "gene expression." A literary theorist thinks "discursive formation." These chunks are efficient for thinking, but they're opaque to anyone who hasn't done the same chunking. The expert forgets that the chunk needs unpacking. They write as if the reader already knows what they know.

The result is prose that makes readers feel stupid. But the problem isn't the reader. It's the writer's failure to imagine someone who doesn't share their knowledge.

Classic style offers a way out. It demands that you treat your reader as an equal—not someone who knows less, but someone who hasn't yet seen what you see. Your job is to point clearly. To use concrete language. To explain technical terms when you can't avoid them. To write as if you're saying, "Look at this—isn't it interesting?" rather than "I am demonstrating my expertise."

This is harder than it sounds. It requires constant awareness of what you know that your reader doesn't. It requires you to resist the pull of jargon, abstraction, and professional shorthand. It requires you to pretend—to imagine a conversation with someone who is smart but uninformed, curious but unfamiliar.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: you can't do this alone. Your own mind is the source of the curse. You can't see what you can't see. That's why feedback from others is essential. Someone who is not you can tell you where you've assumed too much, where you've been unclear, where you've used a word that means nothing to them. They are your counterspell.

So the core problem is this: writing is unnatural, and the curse of knowledge makes it worse. The solution is classic style—a deliberate, conversational approach that treats the reader as an equal and directs their gaze toward something real. It's an act of pretense, but it's the most honest pretense there is.

Before we move on, ask yourself this: when you write, who are you pretending to talk to? And would that person actually understand what you're saying?