A diet pill in the pantry

CLASSROOM RESOURCES

No other news website can match it for design efficiency, but I still think of nytimes.com as an overstuffed kitchen pantry. Most of the time, I open it up and just grab something from one of the front, middle shelves. If I have a few minutes, I might scan the items on the upper and lower shelves for some variety. A bit more time and I might even peer in a bit deeper. And occasionally--to overwork this metaphor--when I need something particular, I'll dig to the recesses to pull it out. But most of the time, an untold hoard of goodies goes unseen, unused and unappreciated (at least by me).

So allow me to dust off my latest find: After Deadline. Now, I don't read the AP Style Book for fun, but I do enjoy some bite-sized (I promise that's it) advice on cutting the overused and the unnecessary and the just-plain-wrong constructions from my prose. Thus I find this blog, which "examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times," a touch addictive. Try it.