Bill Walsh, copy editor and witty authority on language, dies at 55.
'Bill Walsh, a Washington Post copy editor who wrote three irreverent books about his craft, noting evolutions and devolutions of language, the indispensability of hyphens and his hostility toward semicolons, and distinctions for the sake of clarity between Playboy Playmates and Playboy Bunnies, died March 15 at a hospice center in Arlington, Va. He was 55.
The cause was complications from bile-duct cancer, said his wife, Jacqueline Dupree, a Post informational technology specialist.
In the hurly-burly of a newsroom, where even the best reporters have widely varying degrees of grammatical competence, copy editors are the often unheralded guardians of language and common sense. They are the front-line mud soldiers in an endless war against bad spelling, ill-considered sentence construction and factual errors.
They prevent English teachers everywhere from wincing. They save behinds.
By many accounts, Mr. Walsh stood at the zenith of his profession.'>>>
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/bill-walsh-copy-editor-and-witty-authority-on-language-dies-at-55/2017/03/15/6bf9dea4-002e-11e7-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html?utm_term=.17a7305e3208