"Between You and Me"... Another Grammar Thread!

[AGBF]

I had the good fortune of coming upon this article today and was very entertained by it. Its title, "Between You and Me", is also the title of the book about which it is written. I do not believe I have ever bought a book about English grammar before, but I don't think I can resist this one. I am posting a link to the article. I will also post an excerpt (or so) from the article below later!

I hope that all you grammar buffs on Pricescope-and I know that there are many of you-enjoy this as much as I did.

Link...http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/books/review/between-you-me-by-mary-norris.html?ref=books

Deb/AGBF

 

[Jambalaya]

Thanks for this, Deb! It sounds hilarious - I'm going to read it. I do buy books about grammar - but then I never get around to reading them!

Every so often, somebody charismatic comes out with a grammar book and it becomes a bestseller. "Eats Shoot and Leaves" by Lynne Truss was one, years ago, and the latest - before the one you linked - was "Gwynne's Grammar," by this birdlike old-fashioned man who seemed to strike a chord. Well, I bought it at least a year ago and I still haven't read it.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/10/meet-the-grammar-guardian-behind-britains-surprise-bestseller/

 

[AGBF]

I am posting a link to the article. I will also post an excerpt (or so) from the article below later!

Here is the beginning of the article:

"Copy editors are a peculiar species (I’ve been one myself, and at the very publication you are now reading). But those at The New Yorker are something else entirely, a species nova that mutated into existence in 1925 and would hurl itself off a cliff rather than forsake the dieresis in 'coöperate.'

For the uninitiated, The New Yorker is a magazine that until 2003 spelled the word 'deluxe' with a hyphen: 'de-luxe.' It inserts periods into 'I.B.M.,' though IBM itself dropped them long ago. It phonetically splits the word 'England,' when it breaks at the end of a line, like this: 'En-gland.' (One imagines a verb, 'england,' meaning to provide with glands.)

A regular reader might be forgiven for wondering, 'Are these people nuts?' In Mary Norris’s 'Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen,' we have our answer: They most certainly are. And their obsessions, typographical and otherwise, make hilarious reading.

Mary Norris, a New Yorker copy editor, has written a book, 'Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen,' that is being released on Monday.

Norris, a pillar of the copy department for decades, is not crazy herself, or not entirely. For instance, she knows when to stay her hand and let the writer’s voice come through. She also admits occasionally doubting the sanity of The New Yorker’s storied grammar goddess, Eleanor Gould Packard: 'I had the unsettling thought "What if Eleanor ever loses it?"' But what to do? 'No one would enter the copy department and say to Eleanor, "Drop the pencil and step away from the desk."'"

AGBF

 

[momhappy]

Thanks for sharing, AGBF - I'm putting this on my list to read too

 

[AGBF]

This are some excerpts from a review of "Between You and Me" by NPR Books

I wanted to continue to share about this book, which I have now ordered, since much of what has been written about it is (in my opinion) so interesting. This is from one of the many witty reviews, a review by NPR Books.

"Between You & Me, Norris' first book, is part memoir, part guide to the mind-bending nuances of English grammar, and part homage to The New Yorker's legendary writers and copy editors. It brims with wit, personality — and commas. Norris is a stickler who can't resist schtick. She pounces gleefully on typos everywhere, but her book is cheerier and less scolding than the 'Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation' promulgated by Lynn Truss in Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Norris, like Truss, addresses the proper use of commas, apostrophes, hyphens and dashes, but she has headlined the grammatical issue she cares about most: 'My fondest hope is that just from looking at the title you will learn to say fearlessly "between you and me" (not "I") whether or not you actually buy the book and penetrate to the innards of the objective case,' she writes.

Saying 'between you and I' is an error that comes from trying to sound refined and from "putting another person first." Norris explains that if people weren't 'so f——— polite, if they occasionally put themselves first, they would know they had it wrong. No one would begin a confidence with 'Between I and you.'

...​

While reassuring readers that 'everybody makes mistakes,' Norris defends the importance of standards, including the gnarly rules regarding that/which and who/whom. In response to Steven Pinker's assertion that 'the who/whom distinction is on the way out,' she snaps, '"Whom" may indeed be on the way out, but so is Venice, and we still like to go there.'​

"



link...http://www.npr.org/2015/04/08/397823382/memoir-perfectly-punctuated-in-between-you-me

AGBF