First recorded in 1885–90
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The thing I'd like to do if I ran a newspaper would be the telegraph editor and the blue-pencil man.
From Time Magazine Archive
Glavlit, the Soviet censorship agency, combed some of the outgoing cables carefully, eliminating, among other things, mention of its own blue-pencil activity.
From Time Magazine Archive
But recently the Army has stretched the pretext of "security" to blue-pencil information critical of the Army.
From Time Magazine Archive
He would "never go against the Weather Bureau," but once in a long while he does blue-pencil official forecasts that strike him as debatable.
From Time Magazine Archive
Good and true writing no magazine or newspaper editor will blue-pencil.
From The Last Harvest by Burroughs, John
He was scheduled to host the program this Saturday, timed to the premiere of “Bupkis” — which also has Lorne Michaels as a producer — but the writers strike put a blue pencil through it.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 3, 2023
“It Was Vulgar” isn’t perfect — this critic wanted to get out a blue pencil whenever Lowery overused the word “ultimately,” sometimes multiple times on a page, and his endnotes are scant.
From New York Times ● Apr. 5, 2022
Go to “edit profile,” click the blue pencil next to the job you just lost, and you’ll have the opportunity to uncheck the “I currently work there” box, and to put in an end date.
From Forbes ● Sep. 8, 2014
Ian McEwan, who has just published a very short new book, The Children Act, has said that "very few really long novels earn their length", and "my fingers are always twitching for a blue pencil".
From The Guardian ● Sep. 2, 2014
But this time she made it blue, since she was using her blue pencil.
From "The City of Ember" by Jeanne DuPrau
Evidently, he took so seriously Bill’s exhortations to eliminate clutter that he had his last name legally blue-penciled and is now simply Jeff Stuart.
From The New Yorker ● May 19, 2015
Pound blue-penciled the words “bowels” and “trousers” in one early chapter.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 16, 2014
Foe of book and stage censorship, in a city holding the record for censorship, the Transcript fought Prohibition, reported the Thaw case in "blunt, ugly words which pseudo-fastidious contemporaries mincingly blue-penciled."
From Time Magazine Archive
Regrettably, though, the sneaky trick ending remains the sort of hokum that good writers have blue-penciled since O. Henry's heyday.
From Time Magazine Archive
He next considered the handwriting of the blue-penciled monosyllable.
From Success A Novel by Adams, Samuel Hopkins
As a novelist, Jack — and Begley, by extension — could have benefited from a blue-penciling editor.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2016
Last fortnight, with 20 names before him, President Roosevelt started the blue-penciling which would continue until but one name remained: that of the successor to Willis Van Devanter as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
From Time Magazine Archive
Lait's maiden column, sent to the Chief on approval, came back with minor blue-penciling and a marginal note: "Let's be amusing, but not vicious."
From Time Magazine Archive
Few U. S. or British newsmen covering Rightist Spain have stood in the good graces of Generalissimo Franco's avid blue-penciling censors for long.
From Time Magazine Archive
For, seated on a stool behind the desk, haggard but vertical, was Senbot Drosmig, busily reading letters and blue-penciling comments on them with his feet.
From Helpfully Yours by Smith, Evelyn E.
His mother-in-law's interpolations that "it must be a long time first" were scarcely heard; and all her "exclusive information" was hurriedly blue-pencilled by the newspaper men.
From Vision House by Williamson, A. M. (Alice Muriel)
But the reporter has struck, because I blue-pencilled his notes.
From The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted by Barrett, Katharine Ellis
Easleby bought a copy of this issue as soon as he and Starmidge returned to town, and carefully blue-pencilled the cross-headed columns and the staring capitals above them.
From The Chestermarke Instinct by Fletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith)
And one day, sitting alone in his office, a clerk brought him a morning paper with one column marked in a big blue-pencilled oval.
From The Younger Set by Chambers, Robert W. (Robert William)
"I mean that I blue-pencilled that one myself."
From A Crooked Mile by Onions, Oliver [pseud.]
In rush seasons it will make use of publisher's description, after carefully blue-pencilling obtrusive adjectives, but it goes no farther.
From The Building of a Book A Series of Practical Articles Written by Experts in the Various Departments of Book Making and Distributing by Hitchcock, Frederick H.
Comedians will also submit their "gags" and comic scenes for blue-pencilling.
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, July 18, 1917 by Various
Some people just use the good old-fashioned method of printing out the text to be proofed, and blue-pencilling the mistakes.
From The Project Gutenberg FAQ 2002 by Tinsley, Jim
The artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue-pencilling the lapsus calami of God.
From Damn! A Book of Calumny by Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
Robbins was looking over the morning Pic., detecting, as young reporters will, the gross blunders in the make-up, and the envious blue-pencilling his own stuff had received.
From Roads of Destiny by Henry, O.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
