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Between You and Me

Mary Norris · 2015 · 9 ideas · 9 min

Grammar rules that seem arbitrary and pedantic usually exist to resolve genuine ambiguity, and understanding their logic and history makes them far less intimidating than they appear.

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Why this book

Mary Norris, a longtime copy editor at The New Yorker, argues that the punctuation and usage rules many people find baffling or oppressive are not arbitrary decrees handed down by scolds, but practical tools developed to prevent real confusion in writing. Behind the seemingly fussy distinctions between "who" and "whom," or the debate over the serial comma, sits a consistent underlying goal: helping a reader parse a sentence the way the writer intended, without the pileup of ambiguity that happens when punctuation gets sloppy. Norris makes the case for standards not as rigid moral commandments but as flexible conventions that deserve to be understood rather than merely obeyed or resented.

Why this matters becomes clear through Norris's decades inside one of the most exacting copyediting operations in American publishing: small punctuation choices shape how readers experience meaning, tone, and even trust in a piece of writing, often without readers consciously noticing why a sentence felt clear or muddled. By walking through the history of specific marks and rules — many invented far more recently, and far more haphazardly, than people assume — she demystifies grammar as a living, evolving craft rather than a fixed and eternal code, while showing that even professional style guides disagree with each other constantly.

Who should read it

Anyone who has ever felt anxious about commas, semicolons, or the who/whom distinction will find this reassuring and genuinely entertaining. It's also a treat for writers, editors, and readers curious about the backstage culture of a legendary magazine.

About the author

Mary Norris worked for decades as a copy editor and query proofreader at The New Yorker, earning the nickname "Comma Queen" for her exacting attention to language.

The ideas

01The serial comma exists to prevent accidental absurdity, not to enforce fussiness02"Between you and me" is correct because pronouns after prepositions take the objective case03The comma itself is a surprisingly recent invention with a named inventor04"Who" versus "whom" is fading from everyday speech even as it hangs on in careful writing05House style at a major publication involves thousands of small, debatable decisions06Hyphens do real interpretive work that their tiny size disguises07Profanity in professional writing follows its own craft logic, not simple permissiveness08Language carries an inherited gender problem that pronoun history makes visible09Dictionaries disagree with each other more than most readers assume
grammarpunctuationlanguage-historycopyeditingwriting-craft
About this summary. Wisdomly re-expresses a book's ideas, arguments, and structure in our own words — nothing here is the author's text. Summaries are a map, not the territory: if the ideas land, the full book is worth your money and your evenings.