Grammar Nerds Unite… and come out May 16 to Hear Mary Norris Talk

I admit it. I’m a grammar nerd. It’s true. I love posting grammar nerd cartoons and links to my Facebook page. One of my recent favorite books was “The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time” by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson. (I also admit I wished I’d done what they did. How cool and fun.)

Seeing as I’m so public with my grammar nerdiness, our author recruitment committee was quick to let me know when they signed on Mary Norris from The New Yorker to talk about her new book, “Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.” And I was excited… I was also more than happy to interview Mary (via email) before the festival.

Q: Were you always a grammar nerd (and being one, I mean that in the best possible way), and if not, when/why did your love of grammar develop?
MARY: I always loved language, meaning reading and writing, but I didn’t realize that I had an affinity for grammar until I studied German in my senior year in college. It taught me things about English grammar and pointed the way toward other foreign-language study (Greek and Italian), which has been useful both for travel and for insights into English.

Q: What inspired you to write this book and what was the most difficult part of the book writing process for you?
MARY: I was asked to write about commas for the New Yorker‘s web site, and that piece, “In Defense of Nutty Commas,” delivered me the biggest readership I had had to date. So I wrote about other peculiarities of New Yorker style (the diaeresis, profanity)—and pencils!—and the response encouraged me to ask an agent if there might be a book in it. The most difficult thing about the writing process was getting beyond the typical 1,000-word length of a blog post and learning to write chapters: related pieces of about 1,500-2,000 words, which led into one another and rounded the subject off, while also pointing to what would come next. It’s a little like the way a good pool player doesn’t just sink a shot but sets up her next shot at the same time. My editor was very helpful in this and in finding the right balance of grammar instruction with New Yorker anecdotes and personal history.

Q: There are a number of grammar books out there these days (“Eats, Shoots & Leaves” and “The Great Typo Hunt,” for example). What is your favorite other than your own?
MARY: I like the book by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, “The Reader Over Your Shoulder.” I like everything by Bill Walsh, a copy editor for the Washington Post. “For Who the Bell Tolls,” by David Marsh, is sensible and well written. Ammon Shea’s “Bad English” is generous and entertaining. I often consult Theodore Bernstein’s “The Careful Writer.” (Just noticed that you asked for only one. Sorry—got carried away!)

Q: What is your biggest grammer pet peeve?
MARY: I’m going to have to go with the overcorrect use of “I” (or the subjective case) instead of “me” (the objective case) in such formulations as the one in my book title: “between you and me.” People are so afraid to say “me”! I suppose it’s because they all got corrected as children when they said things like “Me and Tommy are going to the store.” People seem to think “I” is more elegant, but it’s wrong! Put yourself first in these compounds, and you’ll hear that it’s wrong. You would never say “between I and you.” Change it to “me” and then switch the order to be polite. Same goes for he/him, she/her, we/us, and they/them. I love a well-used pronoun!

Q: And now our fun (and totally random) question: If you were stranded on a desert island, what three people would you want on the island with you?
MARY: Any three people, from any time and place? I’d take Socrates, Chaucer, and Steve Martin. Steve would have to bring his banjo.

Mary Norris has spent more than three decades as a copy editor (or “prose goddess”) at The New Yorker, where she’s worked with such celebrated writers as Philip Roth, Pauline Kael and George Saunders. She has written for The Talk of the Town and for newyorker.com, on topics ranging from her cousin Dennis Kucinich to mud wrestling in Rockaway. She is best known for her pieces on pencils and punctuation. Norris’s love of language, and her wish to help “all of you who want to feel better about your grammar,” led her to write her first book, “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.”