Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris

Between You & Me is an index of things editors dwell on so that readers don't have to: word gender, the dangling participle, commas, hyphenation. Author Mary Norris is a copy editor at the New Yorker. After an introduction that is easeful even by her employer's standards she introduces the magazine's dictionary of choice, Webster's, which she employs as a prelude to American English, and here the book comes alive ("The best thing ever written about hyphens is..."). Far from "a mean person who enjoys pointing put other people's errors" Norris is tickled pink by her subject. The book is nostalgic in places – New York, mostly ("... her desk facing a wall James Thurber had drawn on in pencil") but her outlook is modern ("I would never disable spell check. That would be hubris"). Grammatical examples are presented as witty mnemonics: it's fun, and you'll learn something.

-- Sunday Star Times, June 2015