Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780393240184)

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."

Author: Mary Norris
ISBN-10: 0393240185
ISBN-13: 9780393240184
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Language: English
Published: 04/06/2015
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 8.32h x 5.80w x 0.87d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 12/22/2014
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2015
Library Journal 02/15/2015 pg. 108
Booklist 03/15/2015 pg. 34
People Weekly 04/20/2015 pg. 38
Entertainment Weekly 04/17/2015 pg. 114
BookPage 04/01/2015
New York Times Book Review 04/19/2015 pg. 18
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/02/2015 pg. 43
Kirkus Best Nonfiction 12/01/2015 pg. 34
Choice 02/01/2016