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
“I’ll blue-pencil all your reportings, if you use such grammar as ‘like she does!’” said Alice sternly.
From The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted by Barrett, Katharine Ellis
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
Tight ballpoint hatching over lightly applied blue pencil, in “Monongahelia River Falls near Riverside West Virginia,” vividly produces the effect of rushing water.
From New York Times ● Dec. 22, 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
Here's my choice of the novels that might weigh as much as a brick, but to which I'd never take a blue pencil.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 2, 2014
He takes a blue pencil and draws little colored dots and lines that make the eyes look deep and textured and full.
From "Mockingbird" by Kathryn Erskine
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
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
Poet Pound used to look over Hemingway's early manuscripts in Paris and returned them, mercilessly blue-penciled, the adjectives gone.
From Time Magazine Archive
The letter had evidently been smuggled past the censor, for it contained much which Mrs. Fosdick would have blue-penciled.
From The Portygee 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
The editors are responsible for blue-penciling incorrect thinking, but they rarely have to.
From Time Magazine Archive
Due chiefly to subsequent pension legislation, he was unable last week to cut the estimate below $3,270,000,000 even after blue-penciling $100,000,000 worth of proposals.
From Time Magazine Archive
Although blue-penciling has eased in recent years, English playwrights have persistently demanded total dramatic freedom, and last July Parliament abolished the Chamberlain's licensing authority.
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
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)
With the most cheerful complacency the military authorities blue-pencilled their despatches to their governments.
From With the Allies by Davis, Richard Harding
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)
It was a copy of the King William County Clarion, and a paragraph in the advertising columns was heavily blue-pencilled.
From In Jeopardy by Sutphen, Van Tassel
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
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
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.
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)
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.
