Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

    Mary Norris's career at The New Yorker began with a lucky connection, but continued by dint of patience, perseverance, and talent. Between You & Me is Norris's cheerful memoir of three decades as a proofreader, fact checker, and copy editor. Some of what she's learned has to do with grammar and usage, but she also treats us to history lessons and field trips.

     Naturally, Norris encounters some marvelous writers, including John McPhee, the great natural history reporter. “When McPhee uses an unfamiliar word, you can be sure it's the only word for what he's trying to say, and he savors it, he rolls the syllables in his mouth as if words were food and he were licking his chops.” Then there are others, who go nameless: “There were writers who weren't very good and yet were impossible to improve, like figure skaters who hit all the technical marks but have a limited artistic appeal and sport unflattering costumes.”

     This being The New Yorker, even the proofreaders are legendary. Norris draws a memorable portrait of Eleanor Gould, grammarian and query proofreader. “Clarity was Eleanor's lodestar, Fowler's Modern English her bible, and by the time she was done with a proof the pencil lines on it looked like dreadlocks.” Right next door sat Lu Burke, who “patrolled the halls like a prison warden–you could almost see the ring of keys at her side–and she terrorized anyone new in the copy department.”

    These women schooled Norris in standard spelling and grammar, and in the quirks and shibboleths of The New Yorker's style. She has interesting things to say about hyphens and commas; she explains what a dangling participle is, and why it can't always be fixed.

     I have my quarrels with a few of her stances. Norris places overmuch confidence in the stylings of Strunk and White, though I suppose that is natural in E. B. White's old bailiwick. I don't quite trust her discussion of 'that' and 'which'; and I'm readier than she is to embrace 'they' as the pronoun when 'he' or 'she' can't be determined, for whatever reason. Her

review of the other nominees for that post, however, is extremely entertaining: “Shem and herm sound like Noah's offspring; ho, hom, hos, if they ever had a chance, would have succumbed to the 'ho' problem; se and hir are apparently used by an online group devoted to sexual bondage; ghach is Klingon.” Compared with these, is a simple 'their' really so offensive?

    But it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races, in the immortal words of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and a lively argument can be more fun than immutable authority. Norris does a challenging job well, and writes about it entertainingly. This is her first book, and I'm eager to see what she'll get up to next.

Email edition, May 2015