Between you & me: confessions of a comma queen, hardcover/mary norris

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 Norriss 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 Lords Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners , The Simpsons , David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn.

She takes us to see a copy of Noah Websters groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick , on a pilgrimage to the worlds 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 wise and witty 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 cant let it push you around.