Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

Mary Norris

Apr 2015 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, 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.

Ratings and reviews

A lazily slapped-together hodgepodge of personal reminiscences and random tidbits of usage advice. In the first category go pretty much any recollection that pops into the author's mind (the mechanics of a milk truck she once drove) and in the next go some useless grammar advice (an incoherent lesson on the subjunctive) and potted linguistics history you could get from a quick Internet search. This chatty volume talks down to its readers, but seems surprisingly unqualified to illuminate them.

...not quite what I expected... more anecdotal than educational...

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.