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Carregando... Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queende Mary Norris (Author & Reader)
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. As an editor, I thoroughly enjoyed this busman's holiday of a book. Witty and fun. ( ) I may not retain the rules of grammar and style written about here, but I enjoyed reading about them. It was especially fun to peek into the New Yorker copy editing sessions and read the examples of many great writers. Also, the chapter on pencils and pencil sharpeners was enlightening. Who knew there was such an art to making pencils? I got this used after it was removed from the Arapahoe Library District's shelves. It's a memoir with free included grammar and usage advice à la The New Yorker. The author has worked in the New Yorker copy department for more than 30 years. Her advice includes: When to use that or which …if the phrase or clause introduced by a relative pronoun — “that” or “which”— is essential to the meaning of the sentence, “that” is preferred, and it is not separated from its antecedent by a comma. p. 38 Chaise longue (French for long chair) not chaise lounge (both are shown in Webster’s presumably because the error is so common) p.45 Referring to ‘between you and I’.’Solecism’ is a fancy word for mistake. [I have confused it in the past with solipsism. This will help.] p. 79 Interesting uses of the comma. Dickens apparently inserted them between subject and predicate in a sentence as in: But what principally attracted the attention of Nicholas, was the old gentleman’s eye …. Grafted upon the quaintness and oddity of his appearance, was something so indescribably engaging … p. 96 In adjectives preceding a noun, if you can substitute “and” for a comma it belongs there. p. 105 A whole chapter on hyphens, entitled, “Who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick?” It's only in the title and not in at least some textual references to the whale. An extensive discussion of semicolons, with the advice that what follows the semicolon should be able to stand as its own sentence — an independent clause. (followed by the exceptions) p. 142 Chapters on the apostrophe and obscenities finish things up. by the title alone, I knew I had to read this book. it is a known fact that almost nothing grinds my gears more than "between you and I." something about a hypercorrection really turns my stomach, so imagine my delight at Norris's swift dispatch of another grosser-than-gross solecism: "It's 'I felt bad,' not 'I felt badly,' because 'to feel badly' would mean 'to grope about ineptly.'" and this was all before she pointed out the difference between an umlaut and a diaeresis! sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
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Mary Norris has spent more than three decades in The New Yorker's copy department, maintaining its celebrated high standards. Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice. Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage comma faults, danglers, 'who' vs. 'whom, ' 'that' vs. 'which, ' compound words, gender-neutral language and her clear explanations of how to handle them. Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. She takes us to see a copy of Noah Webster's groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick, on a pilgrimage to the world's only pencil-sharpener museum, and inside the hallowed halls of The New Yorker and her work with such celebrated writers as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders. Readers and writers will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a new friend in love with language and alive to the glories of its use in America, even in the age of autocorrect and spell-check. As Norris writes, 'The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around.' "--Jacket. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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