'Between You and Me: Confessions of a comma queen' by Mary Norris

Mary Norris has been a copy editor, or something similar, at The New Yorker for over three decades, maintaining the magazine's reputation for grammatical correctness and style. In this memoir-cum-grammar-guide, she is relentlessly chatty and companionable, which is not my sort of thing, so, as I am reading, I am out to pick a fight with her whenever I can (generally on matters of style (grammar's wrestling ring (I think wrestling is done in a ring (grammar certainly is (also, note my use of New Yorkerian commas (the nested brackets being a predilection (affectation)of my own))))).

January 2016