The New Yorker is famous for its stringent copy-editing standards. Mary Norris, who has been at The New Yorker since 1978 and has served as a copy editor, proofreader, and writer, is the author of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen and Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen. “There is no denying that attention to detail isContinueContinue reading “In Language, How Important Is Detail?”
Author Archives: AJ Hughes
They Don’t Like Them Questioning Their Identity
For some, they is plural—period. They refers to them. For others, they can be either plural or singular, depending on the context. There has been a fierce debate over this question, an argument that has been brewing for years. See, for example, a 2020 article titled “The Tragedy of the Singular ‘They,'” a piece fromContinueContinue reading “They Don’t Like Them Questioning Their Identity”
