Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
Mary Norris, 2015
W.W. Norton & Co.
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393352146
Summary
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." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— February 7, 1952
• Raised—Cleveland, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Rutgers University; M.A., University of Vermont
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
Mary Norris was raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Rutgers University in 1974. She earned a Masters in English from the University of Vermont.
Norris joined the editorial staff at The New Yorker in 1978. She has been a query proofreader at the magazine since 1993, as well as a contributor to the magazine's "The Talk of the Town" column and newyorker.com.
Her first book, Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen was published in 2015. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/17/2015.)
Book 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
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.
Patricia T. O'Conner - New York Times Book Review
Brims with wit, personality—and commas.... Norris' enthusiasm is infectious. She's as passionate about sharp pencils as she is about sharp writing.... Delightful.
Heller McAlpin - NPR Books
[P]ure porn for word nerds.
Allan Fallow - Washington Post
“Destined to become an instant classic…. It’s hard to imagine the reader who would not enjoy spending time with Norris.
Christian Science Monitor
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] delightful discourse on the most common grammar, punctuation, and usage challenges faced by writers of all stripes. Not surprisingly, Norris writes well—with wit, sass, and smarts—and the book is part memoir, part manual.... [A]fter reading this book, [readers will] think more about how and what they write.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Part memoir and part writing guide, Norris's thoughtful and humorous narrative provides an irreverent account of her days as a New Yorker comma queen as well as an insightful look into the history of the English language. —Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib.
Library Journal
[A] funny and entertaining new book about language and life… While Norris may have a job as a “comma queen,” readers of Between You & Me will find that “prose goddess” is perhaps a more apt description of this delightful writer.
BookPage
(Starred review.) Norris delivers a host of unforgettable anecdotes.... 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
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Between You & Me:
1. How important is proper grammar, usage, and punctuation? Given today's shortened and very efficient methods for communicating (starting way back with the telegraph and Morse Code), why the emphasis on the aforementioned? Does it utlimately matter?
2. When did you last study the mechanics of writing (grammar, punctuation, et al), and how much had you forgotten until you read Between You & Me? Do you find it all difficult to understand—in other words, is it nonsensical to you? Or is there a basic logic underlying our grammatical rules?
3. Follow-up to Question 3: Explain the apostrophe!
4. Point out where Mary Norris uses humor to drive a point home. What, in particular, made you laugh?
5. Over all, how imprortant are grammatical rules, and when can you break those rules? Can following the rules "to a T" risk erasing the personality of the writer? Consider the letter that Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to Richard Nixon after JFK's husband's death. Was Norris's correction as personal...or powerful as the original?
6. What have you learned from reading Between You & Me? Have you come away with a better understanding of grammar and punctution? Or is all still a mystery to you?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)