Mary Norris

Those extra letters dangling at the ends of words are the genitalia of grammar.

The better the writer, the more complicated the dangler.

Was it an insult to be called a __oman writer_? Didn__ it have a taint of, say, the __oman driver_?

Nobody knows everything__ne of the pleasures of language is that there is always something new to learn__nd everybody makes mistakes.

You cannot legislate language. Prohibition never worked, right? Not for booze and not for sex and not for words.

So many things in language can never be known or settled or explained, except by custom.

If commas are open to interpretation, hyphens are downright Delphic.