William G. Connolly, who over an extended profession as an editor at The New York Instances raised its journalistic requirements, opened new alternatives for a extra numerous vary of staff and in 1999 introduced that have to bear in a wholesale revision of the newspaper’s venerable fashion guidebook, died on Tuesday in Maplewood, N.J. He was 85.

His daughter, Kathleen, confirmed the dying. He was in a rehabilitation facility recovering from a fall, she mentioned.

After greater than 20 years at The Instances — minus a couple of within the early Nineteen Eighties, when he left to work at a Virginia paper — Mr. Connolly was elevated in 1987 to a brand new senior place by which he managed coaching and recruitment.

In that function he oversaw the paper’s moral tips, introduced in new faces from a broader pool of candidates and turned a critic’s eye to the newspaper’s each day output with a e-newsletter that he took over known as “Winners and Sinners.”

He saved his colleagues to excessive requirements, but in addition entertained them together with his dry wit and punctuational preferences; he particularly liked the semicolon.

He was, in brief, a pure alternative to affix his pal and fellow editor Allan M. Siegal a decade later within the herculean process of revising the venerable “The New York Instances Guide of Type and Utilization,” which had been in use for many years not simply inside the newspaper however by tons of of different publications and numerous college students and nonprofessional writers.

However the ebook had not been touched in many years, and its timeworn entries mirrored a vanishing analog world dominated by white males.

Figuring out of an unused radio studio within the newspaper’s previous workplaces on West forty third Road in Manhattan, Mr. Connolly and Mr. Siegal, an assistant managing editor, meticulously reviewed and rewrote the handbook’s hundreds of entries, increasing what had been a slim ebook to 365 pages, organized from A to Z.

Quite than dictate the phrases used to outline a bunch of individuals, they dominated that the newspaper ought to use the phrases these folks most well-liked. In addition they put to relaxation a debate over whether or not it was ever acceptable to make use of sure racial slurs, even in a citation (no).

Mr. Connolly was notably irked by the previous handbook’s use of a single English male title — John Manley — in all its examples. He changed them with an extended listing of surnames, all of which imply “Lamb” in numerous languages: Cordero (Spanish), Agneau (French) and Kikondoo (Swahili), amongst others.

“He saved monitor of them on a spreadsheet,” Merrill Perlman, a former Instances editor who assisted Mr. Connolly on the ebook, mentioned in a telephone interview. “He didn’t need to overuse them.”

Mr. Manley, as soon as ubiquitous throughout the handbook, survived in only one spot: the entry for obituaries.

William Gerard Connolly Jr. was born on Oct. 12, 1937, in Scranton, Pa. His father labored for the U.S. Publish Workplace, and his mom, Loretto (Blewitt) Connolly, was a instructor.

He studied philosophy and English on the College of Scranton, graduating in 1959, after which entered the U.S. Military. He spent three years as a information announcer and disc jockey for Armed Forces Radio from its workplaces in New York Metropolis.

Remaining in New York, he labored as a replica boy at The Instances whereas finding out for a grasp’s diploma at Columbia College’s college of journalism. After graduating in 1963, he labored temporary stints at an extended listing of newspapers — together with The Minneapolis Tribune, The Houston Chronicle and The Detroit Free Press — earlier than returning to The Instances in 1966.

He married Clair Connor in 1964. She died in 2013. Together with their daughter, he’s survived by his sons, William G. Connolly III; Harold Connolly; three grandchildren; and his sister, Sister Jane Marie Connolly.

Although he wrote his justifiable share of reports articles, Mr. Connolly was primarily an editor, with postings on the overseas desk, The New York Instances Journal, the actual property part and the metropolitan desk. He was additionally the founding editor of the Science Instances part.

He left in 1979 to grow to be the managing editor of The Virginia Pilot, in Norfolk, Va. In 1981, he began educating for the Maynard Institute, which ran a summer season program in Tucson, Ariz., that educated journalists of colour for jobs as copy editors.

By the mid-Nineteen Eighties The Instances was coming beneath each public and inner criticism for its stodgy editorial fashion and lack of range in its workers and its protection, and Mr. Connolly, together with his explicit mixture of administration expertise and insider consciousness of Instances tradition, was a logical candidate to start turning that round.

He returned as an assistant editor on the nationwide desk after which as deputy editor of The Week in Evaluate part, although in each posts he was given the added mission of serving to to open up the newspaper to a broader cohort of staff.

After his promotion to senior administration in 1987, he created the information division’s first management-training program. And he introduced in a brand new era of editors, not simply extra racially numerous however from a greater variety of backgrounds and experiences.

His work with Mr. Siegal to revise the stylebook was his final main undertaking at The Instances earlier than retiring in 2001, although he continued to seek the advice of on future revisions, which saved their names as authors.

“This handbook displays The Instances’s impression of its educated and complicated readership — conventional however not tradition-bound,” they wrote of their introduction. “All through, the aim is a fluid fashion, easygoing however not slangy and solely often colloquial.”