The most irreverent and helpful book on language since the #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
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."
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
