38 Quotes by Mary Norris

The image of the copy editor is of someone who favours a rigid consistency, a mean person who enjoys pointing out other people’s errors, a lowly person who is just starting on her career in publishing and is eager to make an impression, or, at worst, a bitter, thwarted person who wanted to be a writer and instead got stuck dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and otherwise advancing the careers of other writers.

I would never disable spell-check. That would be hubris. Autocorrect I could do without.

Muphry’s Law: “If you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.

In my experience, the really great writers enjoy the editorial process.

The point is not to let the orthography distract the reader from the meaning.

I always forget that, in the popular imagination, the copy editor is a bit of a witch, and it surprises me when someone is afraid of me....Relax, I want to say. I don't make a habit of correcting people in conversation or in print--unless it's for publication and they ask for it, or I'm getting paid.

Nobody knows everything – one of the pleasures of language is that there is always something new to learn – and everybody makes mistakes.

A writer friend who was born in England summed up her feelings for the semicolon in a remark worthy of Henry James: “There is no pleasure so acute as that of a well-placed semicolon.” I guess the opposite of that is that there is no displeasure so obtuse as that of an ill-placed semicolon.

Whom” may indeed be on the way out, but so is Venice, and we still like to go there.