Between You Me Confessions Of A Comma Queen

"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. Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Amazon, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Journal.

The most irreverent and enjoyable book on language since Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Mary Norris has spent more than three decades guarding the New Yorker's grand traditions of grammar and usage. Now she brings her vast experience and sharpened pencil to help the rest of us, in a charming language book as full of life as it is of practical advice. Between You & Me features Norris's hilarious exhortations about exclamation marks and emoticons, splice commas and swear words; her memorable exchanges with writers such as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders; and her loving meditations on the most important tools of the trade. Readers - and writers - will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a wise new friend in love with language. Mary Norris began working at the New Yorker in 1978. Originally from Cleveland, she now lives in New York. This is her first book. Her favourite pencil used to be the Dixon Ticonderoga No. 1, but she now makes do with the Palomino Blackwing. ‘Informative, witty and very funny: a must for anyone who cares about what they write.’ BookMooch ‘A delightful mix of autobiographer, New Yorker lore, and good language sense.’ Ben Yagoda ‘[The] verbal diagnostician I would turn to for a first, second, or third opinion on just about anything.' John McPhee, New Yorker ‘Countless laugh-out-loud passages...A funny book for any serious reader.’ Kirkus ‘Mary Norris is a grammar geek with a streak of mischief, and her book is obscenely fun.' Marilyn Johnson ‘Between You & Me is as entertaining as grammar can be. Very very. Read it and savor it.’ Garrison Keillor ‘Mary Norris’s Between You & Me is so smart and funny and soulful and effortlessly illuminating. Well, she herself is so generous and great—what else would she do?' Ian Frazier ‘Very funny, lucid, and lively...[Norris’] love of language transcends all, reconnecting the alienated pieces of this world—from the micromachinery of the serial comma up to the cosmic mystery of story.‘ New Republic ‘I enjoyed Mary Norris’s book so much. It’s exactly my idea of a good read.’ Kate Grenville, in correspondence ‘This book charmed my socks off...Norris is a master storyteller.’ New York Times ‘If you loved Eats Shoots and Leaves you will ADORE this marvellously intelligent and witty disquisition on the finer points of punctuation and grammar.’ Booktopia Buzz 'This enchanting little tome is a journey through her world of punctuation and grammar, with some very cool anecdotes...If you like words, language or puzzles, this is the book for you – or that friend or mother who always corrects you.' Readings ’So warm and un-fusty that the pages just slip by. Yet it manages in its final few to sneak in thoughtful discussions of, among other disputes, swearing, commas, colons and semi-colons.’ New Zealand Listener ‘Enlightening, useful, and often outright hilarious...From exclamation marks to emoticons, swear words to split infinitives, Mary Norris is the bomb.’ Australian Women’s Weekly

The most irreverent and enjoyable book on language since Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Mary Norris has spent more than three decades guarding the New Yorker’s grand traditions of grammar and usage. Now she brings her vast experience and sharpened pencil to help the rest of us, in a charming language book as full of life as it is of practical advice. Between You & Me features Norris’s hilarious exhortations about exclamation marks and emoticons, splice commas and swear words; her memorable exchanges with writers such as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders; and her loving meditations on the most important tools of the trade. Readers—and writers—will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a wise new friend in love with language.

The Comma Queen returns with a buoyant book about language, love, and the wine-dark sea. In her New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, Mary Norris delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils and punctuation in The New Yorker’s celebrated copy department. In Greek to Me, she delivers another wise and funny paean to the art of self-expression, this time filtered through her greatest passion: all things Greek. Greek to Me is a charming account of Norris’s lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, goes searching for the fabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine—and more than a few Greek men—Greek to Me is the Comma Queen’s fresh take on Greece and the exotic yet strangely familiar language that so deeply influences our own.

These are interesting times for word nerds. We ate, shot and left, bonding over a joke about a panda and some rants about greengrocers who abuse apostrophes. We can go on Facebook and vow to judge people when they use poor grammar. The fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Elements of Style inspired sentimental reveries. Grammar Girl's tally of Twitter followers is well into six digits. We can't get enough of a parody of the Associated Press Stylebook, of all things, or a collection of "unnecessary" quotation marks. Could you care less? Does bad grammar or usage "literally" make your head explode? Test your need for this new book with these sentences: "Katrina misplaced many residents of New Orleans from their homes." "Sherry finally graduated college this year." "An armed gunman held up a convenience store on Broadway yesterday afternoon." Pat yourself on the back if you found issues in every one of these sentences, but remember: There is a world out there beyond the stylebooks, beyond Strunk and White, beyond Lynne Truss and Failblogs. In his long-awaited follow-up to Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style, while steering readers and writers on the proper road to correct usage, Walsh cautions against slavish adherence to rules, emphasizing that the correct choice often depends on the situation. He might disagree with the AP Stylebook or Merriam-Webster, but he always backs up his preferences with logic and humor. Walsh argues with both sides in the language wars, the sticklers and the apologists, and even with himself, over the disputed territory and ultimately over whether all this is warfare or just a big misunderstanding. Part usage manual, part confessional, and part manifesto, Yes, I Could Care Less bounces from sadomasochism to weather geekery, from "Top Chef" to Monty Python, from the chile of New Mexico to the daiquiris of Las Vegas, with Walsh's distinctive take on the way we write and talk. Yes, I Could Care Less is a lively and often personal look at one man's continuing journey through the obstacle course that some refer to, far too simply, as "grammar."

'Any bibliophile will find many enjoyable nuggets in this compendium of book chat' Stephen Poole, Guardian 'An engaging little eye-opener about the publishing business, full of tasty nuggets about books, writers and their editors' Sunday Times 'Enjoyable ... engaging ... insightful' Independent Once upon a time, a writer had an idea. They wrote it down. But what happened next? Join Rebecca Lee, professional text-improver, as she embarks on a fascinating journey to find out how words get from an author's brain to finished, printed books. She'll reveal the dark arts of ghostwriters, explore the secret world of literary agents and uncover the hidden beauty of typesetting. Along the way, her quest will be punctuated by a litany of little-known (but often controversial) considerations that make a big impact: ellipses, indexes, hyphens, esoteric points of grammar and juicy post-publication corrections. After all, the best stories happen when it all goes wrong. From foot-and-note disease to the town of Index, Missouri - turn the page to discover how books get made and words get good.* * Or, at least, better

“We think of English as a fortress to be defended, but a better analogy is to think of English as a child. We love and nurture it into being, and once it gains gross motor skills, it starts going exactly where we don’t want it to go: it heads right for the goddamned electrical sockets.” With wit and irreverence, lexicographer Kory Stamper cracks open the obsessive world of dictionary writing, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it to the knotty questions of ever-changing word usage. Filled with fun facts—for example, the first documented usage of “OMG” was in a letter to Winston Churchill—and Stamper’s own stories from the linguistic front lines (including how she became America’s foremost “irregardless” apologist, despite loathing the word), Word by Word is an endlessly entertaining look at the wonderful complexities and eccentricities of the English language.

"A provocative and jaunty romp through the dos and don'ts of writing for the internet" (NYT)--the practical, the playful, and the politically correct--from BuzzFeed copy chief Emmy Favilla. A World Without "Whom" is Eats, Shoots & Leaves for the internet age, and BuzzFeed global copy chief Emmy Favilla is the witty go-to style guru of webspeak. As language evolves faster than ever before, what is the future of "correct" writing? When Favilla was tasked with creating a style guide for BuzzFeed, she opted for spelling, grammar, and punctuation guidelines that would reflect not only the site's lighthearted tone, but also how readers actually use language IRL. With wry cleverness and an uncanny intuition for the possibilities of internet-age expression, Favilla makes a case for breaking the rules laid out by Strunk and White: A world without "whom," she argues, is a world with more room for writing that's clear, timely, pleasurable, and politically aware. Featuring priceless emoji strings, sidebars, quizzes, and style debates among the most lovable word nerds in the digital media world--of which Favilla is queen--A World Without "Whom" is essential for readers and writers of virtually everything: news articles, blog posts, tweets, texts, emails, and whatever comes next . . . so basically everyone.