The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around.

- Mary Norris

Punctuation is a deeply conservative club. It hardly ever admits a new member.

- Mary Norris

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

- Mary Norris

The comma, if it's left out, sometimes can be a problem. There's a slogan on a T-shirt going around that "Let's Eat, Grandma," and "Let's Eat Grandma…

- Mary Norris

Many survivors refuse to talk about what they went through but I've never been ashamed to have been in one of those places. The shame is not mine; th…

- Mary Norris

One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person: not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign…

- Mary Norris

Commas, like nuns, often travel in pairs.

- Mary Norris

The English language is full of words that are just waiting to be misspelled, and the world is full of sticklers, ready to pounce.

- Mary Norris

There is a phase in the life of every copy editor when she is obsessed with hyphens.

- Mary Norris