This book is part-memoir, part-usage guide, part-casual history book. I enjoyed it.

Quirky New Yorker anecdotes combined with dictionary and punctuation history
Review of the Audible Audio audiobook edition (April 2015)

I didn't get on with this book at all. There was some helpful information about grammar and punctuation hidden among the random anecdotes, which just barely saved it from being a one-star or DNF. Overall, though, I think this book was written specifically for New Yorker mega-fans who would be thrilled by the name-dropping and insider gossip.

The author also:
-Mentions the ethnicity of her two Black coworkers (but no-one else) in her first ever job, then jokes that she was glad they decided not to come to her Halloween party because one of her other friends came dressed as a Klansman;
-Likens the question mark to "a lazy Irishman";
-Says a landmark was named after "an Indian chief";
-Proudly talks about how frequently she sneers at people who she thought were mispronouncing words, only to find out later that she was the one who had it wrong.

There's also a horribly problematic section about her sister's transition.

There are far better guides to grammar and punctuation out there that provide better information without all the baggage.

What a delightful book. It is mostly a memoir of the author's years working at the New Yorker magazine, with some lovely bits about grammar and style guides tossed in for good measure.

Norris manages to hit the high points of modern grammar issues, and how the copy editing world has changed, and how hard it is to get wooden No. 1 pencils nowadays.

I'd recommend it to editors, grammar enthusiasts, readers, and writers.

This is delightful from beginning to end (excluding, for me, the apparently mandatory chapter on obscenity???). It is somewhat rambling, but I loved that ramble--from poolside foot-checker to copy editor at the New Yorker. Norris chronicles how she ended up at the New Yorker, tosses in some grammar and usage, gifts us with some marvelous notes and quirks from authors and other editors, and tops it off with a chapter on pencils and pencil sharpeners--the buttercream crowning the book---just because she can. Loved it!

Mary Norris is delightful! Stories of obsessions with commas, apostrophes, and pencils. (Oh, pencils!) This book is for the fan of punctuation, not so much for anyone wanting to learn more about it.

A few things I want to remember from this book:
Merriam Webster's Collegiate 11th edition
Noah Webster's house in West Hartford.
Mind the Stop
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
Apostrophe Protection Society
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Somewhat engaging, but probably best suited for grammar nazis, word nerds, and punctuation purists. Author goes into way more detail than one might expect, and there are certainly charming nuggets scattered throughout.... And if you want to know more about pencils and their sharpeners, this is the book for you.

Nerdy and fun

Norris carries on a bit about points of grammar and punctuation as one would expect, but is also quite entertaining. I was a bit dismayed to see an error I felt was pretty serious: the protagonist of the novel Vanity Fair was referred to as Becky Thatcher, rather than Becky Sharpe. Nit-picky I know, but given the subject matter, I think that's OK.

My husband knows me well. I came back from a trip a week ago, and this book was waiting for me. I hadn’t heard of it, but if I had, I would have bought it myself. Ms. Norris works at The New Yorker, where since the mid-1970s she has copy-edited (copy edited? Shit. I should know this by now) many articles and features. Part how-to (and how-not-to), part history, this book gives the reader some insight into the challenges we face when trying to come up with the best ways to communicate in written English.

I’m still not sure how best to categorize this book. I’m sure it will be compared to Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but its tone isn’t nearly as scolding. I don’t get the sense that Ms. Norris is judging those of us who make improper use of punctuation; instead I think she is genuinely interested in helping people better understand punctuation so that they can communicate better.

The book provides some insight into work at The New Yorker, including some quirks of its style guide. For example, magazine staff makes use of the diaphoresis, that double-dot bit you see over words such as naïve, in words like cooperate. Staff members also use a double consonant when adding a suffix (travelling instead of traveling, for example). Fascinating. And really appealing to someone like me. This book isn’t for everyone, however. I think there are some folks (I’m thinking of Mary Roach) who can take a topic and make it interesting to literally everyone. I think that to enjoy this book, you need to have at least some passing interest in language. But it can be the slightest of interests. If you ever wonder whether to put a comma in a sentence, for example, you probably have sufficient interest to find this book enjoyable.

One chapter that initially gave me a slight bit of pause was the one on gender. She tackles the idea of gender in nouns in other languages, as well as the attempts to create gendered nouns (e.g. dominatrix) in English. She also talks about the frustrating fact that there is no agreed-upon third person generic; you have to say him or her, there is no singular ‘they’ that is gender neutral. She also dives into the topic of using the appropriate pronouns for someone, as she has experience with this directly: her sister was assigned the gender of male at birth, and later shared with the family that she was in fact a woman. Ms. Norris talks about the early challenges she had with using the correct pronoun. Other than a word choice that I wouldn’t make (she refers to her sister as transsexual instead of transgender; although perhaps that’s the word her sister requested she use), the section is thoughtful and I think really drives home the importance of using the correct pronouns.

I was hovering between a three-star and four-star rating when I turned to find this chapter title: “F*ck This Sh*t.” Come on. That’s unexpected. The book isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but you can tell that Ms. Norris has a sense of humor and is quite self-aware.