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.
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
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
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
Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, hardly ever picks up his blue pencil.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 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 I do see now why it was no accident that I later wound up as a sub-editor with a literal blue pencil.
From "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Author
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
Army censors blue-penciled many unfavorable references to the Supreme Commander that came in from the States.
From Time Magazine Archive
Most of such obvious examples of church baiting have now been blue-penciled away, often because they were singled out and criticized by Dr. Bernhard Olson, a Methodist who teaches at Union Theological Seminary.
From Time Magazine Archive
Here and there, where for a long period no blue-penciled passage occurred, imaginary censorings had been inserted merely to whip curiosity, with the result that the atmosphere of innuendo and suggestion was greatly increased.
From King John of Jingalo The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties by Housman, Laurence
As a novelist, Jack — and Begley, by extension — could have benefited from a blue-penciling editor.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 3, 2016
Every two-minute sequence requires 14 hours of blue-penciling, often as many as 100 splices.
From Time Magazine Archive
Sir: We appreciate your restraint in not blue-penciling Phyllis McGinley's remarks about Bulwer-Lytton.
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
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
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)
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
"I mean that I blue-pencilled that one myself."
From A Crooked Mile by Onions, Oliver [pseud.]
But the reporter has struck, because I blue-pencilled his notes.
From The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted by Barrett, Katharine Ellis
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)
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
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.
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
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.
