What does the word “craft” bring to mind? A small boat? A potter’s studio? Pom poms and glue sticks?
One of my first memories of watching someone practicing a “craft” was at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival long ago. My family and I joined a crowd under a large white tent. A sweaty man wearing a leather apron stood in the center of the crowd, holding a long metal rod with a small bubble of molten glass at the end.
We oohed and awed as he blew into the rod to expand the bubble, then swung it around until it matched the other ornaments hanging from his nearby stall. He made glass blowing look easy, like making dandelion chains or playdough snowmen.
Mary Norris’ Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen is not about sweaty men or glass balls. But Norris’ lovely little book describes another craft that can take a lifetime to master: grammar.
Freeing the writer’s voice
Norris has spent decades honing her craft as a copy editor for The New Yorker. She takes us behind the scenes of the production of this iconic magazine. Turns out there is a whole team of people who make sure it looks and reads exactly the same way each publication—from the “makeup men” who style the pages to the many levels of copy-editors, transcriptionists, and editors.
The writer is a small part of the publishing process, yet their name is the only one under the headline. Here’s how Lu, a head editor, describes how the extensive editing process doesn’t interfere with the writing:
First we get the rocks out. Then we get the pebbles out. Then we get the sand out, and the writer’s voice rises. No harm done (p.46).1
As a writer who often edits work, I love this description of editing. The purpose is not to impose correctness onto a piece of writing but to polish away imperfections until the piece shines. Editing should make the author look good, not steamroll their voice.
English is fluid
My high school grammar class revolved around rules. We memorized comma placement, the use of conjunctions, and the anatomy of a sentence. I don’t remember learning the “why” behind the rules—just that some things are okay and some things are not.
That’s why Norris’ approach to grammar was novel to me. She broke down words and grammar rules into the roots of the language and what they were intended to do or prevent. She opened the engine hood and pointed out how it all works instead of just explaining what the dashboard symbols mean.
Why is it important to understand the rules instead of just memorizing them? It’s because the English language is not as static as we think. Norris explains:
Because English has so many words of foreign origin, and words that look the same but mean something different depending on their context, and words that are in flux, opening and closing like flowers in time-lapse photography (p.112-113).1
I love this visual of the English language straight out of a nature documentary. A tropical flower may look still to hikers walking past. But train a camera on it, and you’ll see how the petals open and close, and the stalk shifts slightly to capture sunlight. Grammar is like an amaryllis—its rules are constantly in flux, even though it looks static.
Take commas, for example. Over the years, the “acceptable” use of commas has changed. Norris uses a Herman Melville passage to illustrate this point. First, she points out his curious placement of commas (so many). Then, she shows the grammatically correct version (less commas). Finally, she reveals the contemporary style of the grammatically correct version (two commas left).
The contrast is shocking. Less commas help us read more quickly and force us to write shorter sentences. These are not bad things. But in Melville’s writing, removing the commas is similar to straightening all the lines and blending the colors to make Van Goh’s Starry Night more realistic. Melville’s passage with “correct” comma placement was clearer but lacked rhythm and personality.
Break the rules to stand out
And that takes us to the last point about the importance of grammar. It’s important to know the rules because writers have to start ignoring them to survive in a world where creatives risk being replaced by generative AI.
I’m not recommending littering writing with random commas or sentence fragments, but focusing on impact over correctness. Add that comma for drama. Start a sentence with a conjunction. Make your writing as emotive, specific, and human as possible without jeopardizing clarity.
As Norris says in her book, “The human element is especially important if we are to stay on top of the computers, which, in their determination to do our job for us, make decisions so subversive that even professional wordsmiths are taken by surprise (p.113).”1
She’s referring to spell check, not ChatGPT, but the saying is still valid. We can’t just create easy-to-read pieces anymore that a machine can parrot. We need to create art.
1Norris, Mary. Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.
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