Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

Posted on 05 May 2018 by Mary Norris

Mary Norris has spent 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. New Download eBook Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris – kino-fada.fr Mary Norris has been carving text into shape at The New Yorker for so long, over thirty years, that she probably deserves an honorary MD in plastic surgery She could definitely tell you, for example, whether boob job requires a hyphen, or is correct as two separate words, and would definitely know the proper usage of nip and tuck Between You and Me is both a memoir of her career in the copy department of th... If commas are open to interpretation, hyphens are downright Delphic.now that i see i was not the only one to be mysteriously gifted with a copy of this book in the mail and that even people like melki, who exhibits flawless grammar despite having to type with giant clumsy bear paws, were similarly singled out, i feel less self conscious about my casual butchery of my mother tongue.this is one of those books equal parts instructive and fun it s closer to a memoir than a primer, but the anecdotes If commas are open to interpretation, hyphens are downright Delphic.now that i see i was not the only one to be mysteriously gifted with a copy of this book in the mail and that even people like melki, who exhibits flawless grammar despite having to type with giant clumsy bear paws, were similarly singled out, i feel ... I was completely surprised when this book arrived in the mail I m guessing that someone at W.W.Norton has read my reviews and decided I needed a primer Thank you I learned quite a bit.In her thirty five years as a copy editor at The New Yorker, Mary Norris has read, and corrected, quite a a few pages of writing, and she s developed some strong opinions on the subject Her chapters cover a wide variety of subjects, from gender to profanity In addition to pondering all forms of punctuation, sh I was completely surprised when this book arrived in the mail I m guessing that someone at W.W.Norton has read my reviews and decided I needed a primer T...I once casually asked a friend how her grandson s graduation ceremony had gone, and she responded that she and her husband, both schoolteachers, had been quite distracted by the number of errors in the program That s the kind of thing that drives Lou and I crazy, she explained I was tempted to say, That drives I crazy too Well, if you don t quite get that or could care less then Between You Me is not going to be your kind of book In fact, Mary Norris combination memoir and I once casually asked a friend how her grandson s graduation ceremony had gone, and she responded that she and her husband, both schoolteachers, had been quite distracted by the number of errors in the program That s the kind of thing that drives Lou and I crazy, she explained I was tempted to say, That drives I crazy too Well, if you don t quite get that or could care less then Between You Me is not going to be your kind of book In fact, Mary Norris combination memoir and grammar guide, which I d ea...Responsible to a Higher PowerThe train driver, the shelf stacker in the supermarket, the telephone engineer working on the overhead cables These people are not just anonymous, they are also effectively invisible We all are aware, at least vaguely, that there are any number of people who mediate our world continuously bu...A master copy editor for The New Yorker manages to fill over two hundred pages with nothing of substance This is a dizzy, unfocused tome that bounces between stories about packing mozzarella to gendered pronouns and how the author really wanted to be a cabbie Although I am rather a grammar stickler, and abused apostrophes make me cry out in agony, I m also an aborted linguistics minor major in French My linguistics professor subscribed to descriptive not prescriptive linguistics, i.e the A master copy editor for The New Yorker manages to fill over two hundred pages with nothing of substance This is a dizzy, unfocused tome that bounces between stories about packing mozzarella to gendered pronouns and how the author really wanted to be a cabbie Although I am rather a grammar stickler, and abused apostrophes make me cry out in agony, I m also an aborted linguistics minor major in French My linguistics professor subscribed to descriptive not prescriptive linguistics, i.e the way you speak is the way you speak, and that s just fine If you prefer to use the neuter prono...What a delightful book It s as if someone took my favorite genre memoir and made it about my favorite topic grammar Could a book be anytailor made for me Luckily, it held up to my expectations.Mary Norris didn t always intend to be an editor In fact, after college she worked at a costume rental store, as a milkman, and as a cheese packer Then she decided to move to New York, and through a family friend, she found a job at The New Yorker Never could there have been aperfect What a delightful book It s as if someone took my favorite genre memoir and made it about my favorite topic grammar Could a book be anytailor made f...Not really for me I was expecting something along the lines of Eats, Shoots and Leaves especially as the blurb said it was laugh aloud funny It really was not Sometimes I think the author found herself funny but it was not on my entertainment radar at all.There were some good bits, some mildly amusing anecdotes and some informative sections although these usually got too bogged d...Mary Norris conversational, confessional manner first made me think that the person always behind the scenes at The New Yorker, America s prestigious literary magazine, wanted her day in the sun ME I imagined her pointing, two thumbs to her chest, I m HERE TheI read, though, thechummy she seemed I want to read what you guys are saying on the web, in reviews, articles, and blogs, she seemed to be saying,...I won a copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads in exchange for an honest review A self proclaimed grammar nerd, I cringe while reading published works that confuse lie and lay or subjective and objective pronouns I could hardly wait to receive and begin reading Between You Me Confessions of a Comma Queen, as I expected the book to be a funny collection of grammatical tragedies How very disappointed I was not due to poor quality but because of fal...

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

05 May 2018

Mary Norris