Mary Norris

What a thoroughly delightful book -- for any lover of the English language or lover of grammar or lover of The New Yorker or just lover of good writing and a tale well told. Mary Norris worked her way up to a job as one of The New Yorker's chief copy editors, a role dear to my heart because I started my career in publishing as a proofreader and copy editor. In this book, she combines an examination of troubling aspects of grammar, spelling, and punctuation with a look at her own career show more (among her pre-magazine jobs, she checked feet for athlete's foot at a public pool in Cleveland and worked at a costume company and as a "milkwoman") and wonderful anecdotes about New Yorker authors and their writing idiosyncrasies.

The chapter titles (which are as witty as Norris' writing) address these subjects: spelling, the which/that issue, gender pronouns, between you and me (of course), commas, hyphens, dashes, semicolons, colons, apostrophes, the use of obscenity, and pencils. In the course of each chapter, Norris gives examples from literature (not limited to New Yorker writers), provides insight into how copy editing, proofreading, and editing interact at the magazine, tells those wonderful anecdotes, and allows the reader to observe her own life and travels.

This book not only gratified my inner grammar and punctuation geek but also delighted me for Norris' familiarity with New Yorker writers I have loved for decades (John McPhee and Ian Frazier, for example) and books by other authors such as James Salter, Philip Roth, and Herman Melville. I hate to mention that nasty, smarmy book by an English author in the same sentence, let alone in the same review, but this book is everything Eats Shoots and Leaves is not: witty, funny, illuminating, entertaining, and welcoming. Parts of it are definitely geeky, but I think enough of it is just fun to be enjoyable for non-geeks too. show less

It was difficult to even begin writing this review; I'm surprisingly anxious about possible grammar errors. However, I figure if you just spotted my on-target use of the semicolon, I have you on my side already. Oh yeah, and maybe that hyphen, too. And that comma just now. I could go on ... ooh look, an ellipsis!

Just a few days in the company of Mary Norris, a former copy editor for The New Yorker magazine, has made me more aware of grammar and punctuation. Not in a way that makes me feel show more superior, thank goodness, but in a way that increases my appreciation of effective use of language (and yes, I did just look up the difference between appreciation of and appreciation for -- in this case, it's "of"). Norris has a depth of knowledge that I could never hope to achieve, but in the space of 200 pages she enriched my understanding of common grammatical concepts (and errors), and shed entirely new light on certain forms of punctuation. Her writing style is breezy and fun: discussing the use of "who" vs. "whom," and whether it really matters, she wrote, "Whom may be on the way out, but so is Venice, and we still like to go there." And a few pages later, she served up a handy rule of thumb:
Here's the takeaway: "who" does not change to "whom" just because it is in the middle of a sentence. The choice of "who" or "whom" is governed not by its role as the object of the sentence or the object of a preposition but by its role in the group of words that has been plugged into that position. ... "who" and "whom" are standing in for a pronoun: "who" stands in for "he, she, they, I, we"; "whom" stands in for "him, her, them, me, us."

In other chapters, Norris discusses commas, hyphens, apostrophes and even profanity. Towards the end of the book she takes a detour into the land of stationery and office supplies, because let's face it, what language lover doesn't also like that stuff? The book is also infused with stories about her assignments and her colleagues at The New Yorker, including an epilogue that wraps things up in a satisfying way and adds a personal touch that elevates this book above a grammar and style guide. show less

The haters hate this book so much that I feel compelled to warn those of you who may be the type to walk into a movie, for example, without ever having read a review or considered the intended audience: apparently such people exist. You must be interested in English usage to enjoy this book. You should have read the New Yorker magazine at least once or twice without having broken out in hives. You probably shouldn't be the kind of person who thinks that "elitism" is a constant affront to show more you. Is the author elitist? Maybe. I don't know. She has standards. It's her job to have them and to enforce them. I don't think she mentions Dan Brown or Danielle Steele in her book, but if you think those authors are good writers, you might think that Mary Norris is an awful elitist. I guess I am one too.

This book is full of lively discussions about issues such as when a comma should appear between two adjectives that modify the same noun and whether the English language could benefit from the adoption of an epicene pronoun. I think Norris does a wonderful job of making these discussions chatty, witty, and fun, but then I'm an editor, and I take to this kind of stuff like Nabokov took to butterflies. Anyway, she also tells lots of stories about the interesting people who have worked for or written for the New Yorker. And this isn't a usage guide. It's basically shop talk from someone's who's one of the best at what she does. I concede her mastery of her subject, but I still want to argue with her sometimes, and that's part of the fun. (A book that this is sometimes compared to, "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," isn't fun at all, because the author isn't an expert—she's just an opinionated layperson on a rant. I want to shake her instead of argue with her.)

I'm going to read this book again, slowly, using a pen to mark issues, and skipping to the back more frequently to read the endnotes. Then I'm going to write Mary Norris a letter explaining that the archaic long 's' is not an "f." I'm not sure she doesn't know that, but she writes as if she doesn't. It bugs me. That's the kind of person I am, and that's why I love this book so much. show less

In this unique blend of memoir and grammar guide, we get to follow along with Mary Norris, who worked as a copy editor at The New Yorker, as she waxes eloquent about style whether it be comma usage, hyphens, semicolons, the use of taboo language in print, or her preferences for a No. 1 pencil and a good pencil sharpener.

I enjoyed listening to Mary Norris read her own prose (and helpfully spelling out words or vocalizing the punctuation as needed), and her sense of fun when it comes to usage. show more Yes, there are rules. In fact, I was delighted and amused to find out that The New Yorker uses the second edition of Webster's dictionary first for spelling and usage, for example - I would have chosen Webster's Third myself, but that's the descriptionist in me coming out. She also has a good sense of humor about it all and isn't rigid about what's "right", occasionally including examples where authors break the usage rules but it works better their way. Sometimes grammar is personal, as she discovers when her sister transitioned and Mary had to relearn saying "she" when she most naturally went for "he." Most delightfully, her training means that she's intrigued when something is unexpected, and will go on a bit of research to figure out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick the title when the whale is simply Moby Dick. I didn't always agree with her style preferences (I don't mind a singular "they"), nor did I always follow her more technical explanations, but I loved getting to see how the mind of a copy editor works and appreciated her eye for style and ear for language. show less