On the subject of style, Mr Bellos explains how it came to mean something other than the indispensable attributes of a gentleman and how literary style became contained within the structure of a sentence.

ECONOMIST: Shape-shifting

It's funny you raised that. (Laughter.) I love the structure of the sentence.

WHITEHOUSE: Press Briefing

In an English-language class, Mohammad Bakhtiari stood in front of his pupils and discussed the architecture of the language: sentence structure, the formation of paragraphs, the conjugation of verbs.

NEWYORKER: After America

The system can respond to the thousands of different ways in which a request might be expressed, taking into account diverse phrasing, sentence structure and regional accents.

ECONOMIST: REPORTS: Just talk to me | The