William Stanley Jevons was an English economist and logician.

William Starr Myers was a Princeton University professor and historian who chronicled New Jersey and the GOP

William Stearns Davis was an American educator, historian, and author. He has been cited as one who "contributed to history as a scholarly discipline,. .. [but] was intrigued by the human side of history, which, at the time, was neglected by the discipline." After first experimenting with short stories, he turned while still a college undergraduate to longer forms to relate, from an involved (fictional) character's view, a number of critical turns of history. This faculty for humanizing, even dramatizing, history characterized Davis' later academic and professional writings as well, making them particularly suitable for secondary and higher education during the first half of the twentieth century in a field which, according to one editor, had "lost the freshness and robustness. .. the congeniality" that should mark the study of history. Both Davis' fiction and non-fiction are found in public and academic libraries today.

William Strunk Jr. was an American professor of English at Cornell University and author of The Elements of Style (1918). After revision and enlargement by his former student E. B. White, it became a highly influential guide to English usage during the late 20th century, commonly called Strunk & White.

William Stubbs was an English historian and Anglican bishop. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford between 1866 and 1884. He was Bishop of Chester from 1884 to 1889 and Bishop of Oxford from 1889 to 1901.

William Clark Styron Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.

William Thompson Davis (1862–1945) was an American naturalist, entomologist, and historian especially associated with Staten Island in New York City. He was prominent in the borough's affairs throughout his life.

William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched-earth policies that he implemented against the Confederate States. British military theorist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart declared that Sherman was "the most original genius of the American Civil War" and "the first modern general".

William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass, a British-born American science fiction author, notable for many stories with satirical elements.

William Thomas Thornton, CB (1813–1880) was a nineteenth-century economist, civil servant and author.