Byline: ALEX BEAM

The Word Police have mobilized again.

The Washington Post's week-in-review section recently released its "Things We Do Not Say" list of over 70 words and expressions they want writers to avoid. The list provides a rare window into the little-noticed world of the editorial zeitgeist of that iconic newspaper. Yes, almost every phrase in that previous sentence appears on the Post's no-fly list.

The New York Times, too, has its bugbears - great word, by the way. An editor there has objected to the overuse of the cliches "tasked with" and "channeling," e.g., Taylor Swift "channeling her inner Carole King," and so on.

In a similar, sweeping editorial diktat, the former editor of The Boston Globe forbade us writers to use the word "gyroball." This was the Japanese mystery pitch imported to the United States in 2007 by fireballer Daisuke Matsuzaka. ("It is thrown with a spiral-like spin, so that there is no Magnus force on the ball as it arrives toward home plate," Wikipedia helpfully explains.)

To be fair, there was...