Colors

Blue Pencil, To

"To blue pencil" is an expression meaning to edit, correct, or censor. The expression comes from the pre-computer era when editors used blue pencils to mark up documents since that color will typically not appear in some kinds of old reproduction processes. The expression can also be used as a noun.

A related expression, the "Lord Chamberlain's blue pencil," is a British expression for state censorship and regulation of writing and performance.

How It's Used

“I can see why it might be tempting to look at modern media, in particular the internet, and long for simpler times; to imagine a past where children were properly protected, and regulation was via the Lord Chamberlain's blue pencil.

“The trouble is that longing for such a past, when faced with the complexity of the real world, is a delusion. Recently, I read a particularly powerful polemic against the rise of a new medium. What a threat this thing was. It 'wasted thousands of hours in the misapplication of time', was 'dangerous and habit-forming', and created an 'insatiable craving for novelty' which left the participant 'disgusted with everything serious or solid'. In fact I thoroughly recommend Jacqueline Pearson's Women's Reading in Britain 1750-1835: A Dangerous Recreation. Watch out for the novel, they said, it'll be the ruin of those vulnerable girls. Sound familiar?”

“It took five years for authors Patrick Creed, a volunteer firefighter and Army officer, and Rick Newman, a writer for U.S. News and World Report, to pull together this story. Combing public records and conducting 150 interviews, Creed and Newman have done a monumental reporting job. Firefight tells the tale moment by moment through the accounts of dozens of participants and eye-witnesses. The book needed an editor with a sharper blue pencil—it's too long, and the writing can be monotonous. Not unlike the heroes whose stories they tell, however, Creed and Newman faced a daunting challenge, rose to the occasion and rescued a piece of history from the ashes.”

“Helene had no literary theories—she had literary values. She valued clarity and transparency. She had nothing against style, if it didn’t distract from the material. Her blue pencil struck at redundancy, at confusion, at authorial vanity, at the wrong and the false word, at the unearned conclusion. She loved good writing, therefore she loved the reader: good writing did not cause the reader to stumble over meaning.”

“The story of Lish and Carver's working relationship has been causing storms in the literary world since it was first discussed by the journalist D. T. Max in The New York Times ten years ago; two years ago The New Yorker published Carver's unedited version of the lead story from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love—with Carver's original title, "Beginners"—displaying the edits on its website. This month, at the prompting of Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, an edition of the original typescript of the whole collection is being published. Readers will be able to make up their own minds as to the benefits, or otherwise, of Lish's blue pencil.”

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