The New York Times style police

For those of you fascinated by things like the official difference between “premiere” and “premier” and the original meaning of the phrase “begs the question,” I’d like to recommend After Deadline, a Times Topics blog to which deputy news editor Philip B. Corbett makes weekly posts about the varied and numerous stylistic errors that slip by the New York Times copyeditors and make it into print. In this space, Corbett (who maintains the paper’s official style manual) points out not only plain and simple mistakes (such as “parking break” for “parking brake,” or “G.I. track exam” for “G.I. tract exam”), but also tracks incidences of cliche, colloquialism, and many other kinds of stylistic sloppiness. Writers and grammar geeks would be well-advised to check it out.