Norris is a copy editor at The New Yorker. She's been there for more than three decades, copyediting amazing authors, meeting famous literati, and being surrounded by some of the best and brightest in the publishing and magazine industries. As she addresses some of the most common grammatical problems normal people encounter, she weaves in her experiences at work on the same subject. She tackles all sorts of punctuation (commas, hyphens, dashes, parentheses, etc.), spelling, word order, profanity in print, pronouns, and more. Each self-contained essay is fairly short and her stance on the topic is easily understood. Her examples from her years at the magazine are not only real world examples, they are completely engaging. Norris explains prescriptive grammarians versus descriptive grammarians, where she falls on the spectrum, and why. Her writing is accessible and the anecdotes are fun. Those looking for a handbook of grammar will not find it here, even though most readers will still learn several things from these highly entertaining and intelligent essays.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Review: Between You and Me by Mary Norris
Norris is a copy editor at The New Yorker. She's been there for more than three decades, copyediting amazing authors, meeting famous literati, and being surrounded by some of the best and brightest in the publishing and magazine industries. As she addresses some of the most common grammatical problems normal people encounter, she weaves in her experiences at work on the same subject. She tackles all sorts of punctuation (commas, hyphens, dashes, parentheses, etc.), spelling, word order, profanity in print, pronouns, and more. Each self-contained essay is fairly short and her stance on the topic is easily understood. Her examples from her years at the magazine are not only real world examples, they are completely engaging. Norris explains prescriptive grammarians versus descriptive grammarians, where she falls on the spectrum, and why. Her writing is accessible and the anecdotes are fun. Those looking for a handbook of grammar will not find it here, even though most readers will still learn several things from these highly entertaining and intelligent essays.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
A tale of adultery that manages to withhold judgment as it traces the impact on all four people touched by an affair, Kylie Ladd's After...
-
What would you do if you opened the door to find a man you hadn't seen in 14 years standing on your doorstep, a man who disappeared from...
-
Greece has always been one of those places I'd love to see someday. But I, like so many other people, have always focused my future pla...
-
When you build a life and then the rug is pulled out from under you, it can be hard to find a way forward, especially if life changes comp...
-
As the days get hotter and you start to pack your beach bag, you'll want to find appropriate reading and what better to read than a bo...
-
When your life is going along smoothly, you're happy, you enjoy your job, you love your spouse and kids, do you ever worry about somet...
-
Often in life, our memories of a place are intimately connected to how we felt when we were there. We love places where we were happiest ...
-
If your life, your very identity, is a lie, can you live hiding your true self forever? Or would you eventually have to leave the life you...
-
Have you ever been so disappointed because of your expectations of a book that you can hardly bear it? The back cover (and to be fair, pe...
-
Short stories are not generally my milieu but Jennifer Haigh's new collection of interconnected stories tied together both by character...
No comments:
Post a Comment
I have had to disable the anonymous comment option to cut down on the spam and I apologize to those of you for whom this makes commenting a chore. I hope you'll still opt to leave me your thoughts. I love to hear what you think, especially so I know I'm not just whistling into the wind here at my computer.