內容簡介
內容簡介 Mary Norris任職紐約客雜誌審稿編輯三十年，期間修改過無數稿件，是《紐約客》的文法拼字守門員，累積深厚的語言文字功力。但她同時也是一位幽默風趣的作家，在這本暢銷書中，Mary Norris分享她所擁有關於英語在寫作與日常的廣袤知識，並以詼諧的口吻與閃爍光芒的深刻智慧，闡述對於英語與文法，是一本相當特別的語言書。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 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 can't let it push you around."
