A note to readers: After this week’s installment, we’ll be suspending publication of After Deadline for the time being.

This feature is based on a weekly internal critique of Times writing and editing that I’ve shared with the newsroom for almost 10 years. A lot has changed in that time, and I’m now working with colleagues to consider new approaches for newsroom feedback. Whatever we settle on, we remain committed to protecting the quality of writing and editing that readers expect from The Times.

In the meantime, I will continue to contribute occasional posts to Times Insider about issues of language and style at The Times.

Many thanks for your careful reading, your thoughtful comments and your devotion to good writing.



Here’s this week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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What makes the Morgan Library & Museum’s coming exhibition noteworthy is that it will include three preparatory drawings of the painting, making it one of Rembrandt’s only works for which such sketches survive.

This construction is common but illogical. Make it “one of Rembrandt’s few works …”

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In 2015, a pipeline owned by Plains All American Pipeline sprung a leak that released 3,400 barrels of crude into the ocean, fouling several newly created marine protected areas.

Use “sprang” for the simple past tense.

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There is, moreover, an authority to Viertel’s analysis; he knows from whence he speaks, given a background in dramaturgy (at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles), criticism (at The Los Angeles Herald Examiner) and producing (as the senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters).

Well, “whence” means “from where,” so “from whence” is redundant. But the real problem is that we actually meant “whereof,” meaning “of what.”

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At Kansas, where he was known as “the Great White Whale,” he had been an all-American, averaging almost 25 points a game at a time when basketball was a slower, more low-scoring pursuit.

Make it “a slower, lower-scoring pursuit.”

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The court papers said Ms. Sorrell had learned the dean had also harassed other women employees at the university.