William G. Connolly, who over a long career as an editor at The New York Times raised its journalistic standards, opened new opportunities for a more diverse range of employees and in 1999 brought that experience to bear in a wholesale revision of the newspaper’s venerable style guidebook, died on Tuesday, Dec. 12, in Maplewood, N.J. He was 86.
His daughter, Kathleen, confirmed the death. He was in a rehabilitation facility recovering from a fall, she said.
