With the 1974 change in title, the vice presidency replaced the provost as the university's chief academic officer.
He had joined UConn's Storrs campus faculty in 1951 as an instructor and rose to be a full professor.
A graduate of Albion College, Wilson earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan.
When the Columbia Guide was published online by Bartleby.com in 2001, the site said of Wilson's book: "A vigorous assessment of how our language is best written and spoken and how we can use it most effectively, this guide is the ideal handbook of language etiquette: friendly, sensible, reliable, and fun to read."
In the book's introduction, Wilson called standard American English usage "linguistic good manners, sensitively and accurately matched to context — to listeners or readers, to situation, and to purpose."