Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

by Mary Norris

Overview

New York Times Bestseller
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal

"Hilarious…This book charmed my socks off." —Patricia O’Conner, New York Times Book Review

Mary Norris has spent more than three decades working in The New Yorker’s renowned copy department, helping to maintain its celebrated high standards. In Between You & Me, she brings her vast experience with grammar and usage, her good cheer and irreverence, and her finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393352146
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/04/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Mary Norris is the author of Greek to Me and the New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, an account of her years in The New Yorker copy department. Originally from Cleveland, she lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Confession of a Comma Queen 1

Chapter 1 Spelling Is for Weirdos 15

Chapter 2 That Witch! 35

Chapter 3 The Problem of Heesh 57

Chapter 4 Between You and Me 77

Chapter 5 Comma Comma Comma Comma, Chameleon 92

Chapter 6 Who Put the Hyphen in Moby-Dick? 111

Chapter 7 A Dash, a Semicolon, and a Colon Walk into a Bar 131

Chapter 8 What's Up with the Apostrophe? 147

Chapter 9 F∗ck This Sh∗t 157

Chapter 10 Ballad of a Pencil Junkie 169

Epilogue: The Million-Dollar Copy Editor 193

Acknowledgments 201

Notes 205

Appendix: Some Books I Have Found Particularly Helpful 213

Index 217

Editorial Reviews

"Ms. Norris, who has a dirty laugh that evokes late nights and Scotch, is…like the worldly aunt who pulls you aside at Thanksgiving and whispers that it is all right to occasionally flout the rules."— Sarah Lyall New York Times

"[P]ure porn for word nerds."— Allan Fallow Washington Post

"Mary Norris has an enthusiasm for the proper use of language that’s contagious. Her memoir is so engaging, in fact, that it’s easy to forget you’re learning things."— People

"A rollicking adventure into the origins of the apostrophe, the proliferation of profanity in American culture, and everything in between."— San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] winningly tender, funny reckoning with labor and language."— Megan O'Grady Vogue

"Funny and endearing."— Joanna Connors Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Laugh-out-loud funny and wise and compelling from beginning to end."— Steve Weinberg Houston Chronicle

"Mary Norris is the verbal diagnostician I would turn to for a first, second, or third opinion on just about anything."— John McPhee The New Yorker

"Smart and funny and soulful and effortlessly illuminating."— Ian Frazier

"Mary Norris brings a tough-minded, clear-eyed, fine-tuned wisdom to all the perplexities and traps and terrors of the English sentence."— Adam Gopnik

"Mary Norris is a grammar geek with a streak of mischief, and her book is obscenely fun."— Marilyn Johnson

"This is as entertaining as grammar can be. Very very. Read it and savor it."— Garrison Keillor

"Destined to become an instant classic…It’s hard to imagine the reader who would not enjoy spending time with Norris."— Christian Science Monitor

From the Publisher

2016 Thurber Prize for American Humor, Short-listed
2016 ABA Indies Choice Book Award, Short-listed

PAPERBACK COMMENTARY

Copy editors are a peculiar species…But those at The New Yorker are something else entirely…A regular reader might be forgiven for wondering, "Are these people nuts?" In Mary Norris's Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, we have our answer: They most certainly are. And their obsessions, typographical and otherwise, make hilarious reading…Despite the extreme grammar, this book charmed my socks off…Norris is a master storyteller and serves up plenty of inside stuff.

The New York Times Book Review - Patricia T. O'Conner

★ 2014-12-15
A New Yorker editor since 1978, Norris provides an educational, entertaining narrative about grammar, spelling and punctuation.The author devotes chapters to commas (who knew a printer more or less invented comma usage in 1490?); apostrophes; hyphens; the difference between "that" and "which"; the proper usage of "who" and "whom" (would Ernest Hemingway have published For Who the Bell Tolls?); dealing with profanity in a national magazine (a chapter in which Norris demonstrates that not all copy editors are prudish); which dictionary (if any) to rely on; and, as a bonus, an ode to pencils with and without erasers. Raised in the Cleveland area, Norris had a vague notion growing up of being a writer. But after attending college, she did not know how to proceed toward that goal, so she worked jobs that included delivering milk to homes, packaging cheese in a factory for sale to supermarkets and washing dishes in a restaurant. The possibility of an editing job at the New Yorker arose only because Norris' brother knew an important person there. Once at the New Yorker, the author engaged in spirited debates with more senior copy editors about all manner of decisions about grammar, punctuation and spelling. Though she observed the rules, she also began to realize that sometimes she had to compromise due to the fact that accomplished writers for the magazine followed their own logic. Norris delivers a host of unforgettable anecdotes about such famed New Yorker writers as Philip Roth, Pauline Kael, John McPhee and George Saunders. In countless laugh-out-loud passages, Norris displays her admirable flexibility in bending rules when necessary. She even makes her serious quest to uncover the reason for the hyphen in the title of the classic novel Moby-Dick downright hilarious. A funny book for any serious reader.

Kirkus Reviews