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