Between You and Me…
…I have always loved grammar. In seventh grade I would diagram sentences for fun. Latin was the perfect language for me, a devotee of indirect objects and a prepositional phrase groupie. If you want to know whether to use lie or lay, I’m your girl.
But punctuation? Of course I abide by the difference between its and it’s, a semicolon and a colon, a dash and a hyphen (I think). Yet when I write I’m free with my commas, using them for effect and cadence as much as anything else.
Enter my good, warm, witty friend Mary Norris with another perspective. A copywriter for the New Yorker, she is as firm in her opinions as the good nuns who taught us both, yet leaves more room for questions than they ever did. Her wonderful book, “Between You and Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen”, will be out in April. Here’s an example of what you have to look forward to.
