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.
But recently the Army has stretched the pretext of "security" to blue-pencil information critical of the Army.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
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
And often I have had them blue-pencil wild statements I had made, which, on second thought, I wished withdrawn ... and during all the uproar I never had a reporter break his word, once given.
From Tramping on Life An Autobiographical Narrative by Kemp, Harry
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
The lack of an editor’s blue pencil is not.
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2021
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
That psychiatrist’s blue pencil dropped, and his professional manner fell off in all directions.
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
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
In outgoing cables from newsmen, the word Catholic was blue-penciled; after passing the censors, one story referred to "Roman President Ngo Dinh Diem."
From Time Magazine Archive
General Thomas White, who retired last June as Air Force Chief of Staff, agreed with Lemnitzer and showed no resentment at being blue-penciled by subordinates.
From Time Magazine Archive
Against their whiteness the pitch pines and cedars stood darkly green and the skeleton scrub oaks and bushes cast delicate blue-penciled shadows.
From Cy Whittaker's Place by Lincoln, Joseph Crosby
As a novelist, Jack — and Begley, by extension — could have benefited from a blue-penciling editor.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2016
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
The censor himself made up for his deficiency in English by blue-penciling everything he could not understand.
From Time Magazine Archive
"Why open with the fruit salad?" he asked, blue-penciling the menu.
From Time Magazine Archive
Opposite them, at his brilliantly lighted window desk, sat McGuire Ellis, in full view of the crowd below, conscientiously blue-penciling telegraph copy.
From The Clarion by Stevens, William Dodge
Finally in looking over a skidway he noticed that one log had not been blue-pencilled across the end.
From Blazed Trail Stories and Stories of the Wild Life by White, Stewart Edward
"I mean that I blue-pencilled that one myself."
From A Crooked Mile by Onions, Oliver [pseud.]
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)
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)
Hastily he blue-pencilled his proofs, threw them into the wire basket, and hurried outdoors to seek the nearest tailor.
From Shandygaff by Morley, Christopher
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.
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
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.
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.
