Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

By Mary Norris

Book Overview

Mary Norris has spent more than three decades in The New Yorker's copy department, maintaining its celebrated high standards. Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.

Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage--comma faults, danglers, "who" vs. "whom," "that" vs. "which," compound words, gender-neutral language--and her clear explanations of how to handle them. Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. She takes us to see a copy of Noah Webster's groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick, on a pilgrimage to the world's only pencil-sharpener museum, and inside the hallowed halls of The New Yorker and her work with such celebrated writers as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders.

Readers--and writers--will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a wise and witty new friend in love with language and alive to the glories of its use in America, even in the age of autocorrect and spell-check. As Norris writes, "The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393240185
• ISBN13: 9780393240184
• Release Date: April 2015
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

“You and I travel to the beat of a diff'rent drum” - Artist: Stone Poneys

C.S. Lewis once said, “We read to know we are not alone.” And this book by Mary Norris is proof of that. Struggling as a child, I had to learn how to spell by memory for a whole week before the spelling test. Then I promptly forgot, so I could replace it with a new list. Do not get me started on the “spell it as it sounds” or phonetics, as first, you have to know how it is supposed to sound. When I first moved to Texas, a teacher in math class was pointing out an “error.” I did not see one. He said the “error” is pointing to the right. I learned Spanish with Castilian records and Texas slang. Try that on a Latino. For some reason, it worked for me in Mexico City. Two years of German formed a hodgepodge of upper and lower. If you use the wrong article for “traffic,” you can have your mouth washed out with soap. I find that she looks at dangling participles on road signs and other signs in the same way. “Caution: Wet Floor.” Why would I want to wet the floor? “End roadwork.” My sentiments. In the movie “Oscar” (1991), Connie looks down at his zipper when he is told by the elocutionist that he has a dangling participle. Now the problems I had, and I forgot, are brought up in this exquisitely comprehensive first-person tale of “Between you and me.” This review was corrected by a spell checker that added 10 commas. I learned true English from reading Ogden Nash.