Charles Harrington Elster

Charlie's Latest

"Fun reading for verbomaniacs," says Booklist of What in the Word? Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to Your Peskiest Questions About Language. Click on Writings above to find out more.

Big Book 2 is Here!

Charlie's
Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations is now even bigger! The second edition is fully updated and has nearly 200 new entries, including oft-mispronounced names like Niger, Pinochet, and Qatar. Click on Writings above to find out more.

A beauty salon in San Diego, California, has a large sign above the entrance that says, "HAIRCUTS: 50% off new customers."
They should have added, "Abandon hair, all ye who enter here."

The Knickerbocker Rule for Writers: "Apply ass to chair."

"A man begins by fooling around with language, and at some point it becomes his life." — Patrick Cavanaugh

"Writing is at the mercy of the greatest number of amateurs—almost the entire population."
— Jacques Barzun

Obsolete: No longer used by the timid. Said of words.
— Ambrose Bierce

Punctuation: A set of symbols that a writer uses to establish the rhythm of a piece, which an editor then uses to destroy it.
— C. H. Elster

You have landed at the website of writer, radio commentator, and lexicomane Charles Harrington Elster, a.k.a. the Grandiloquent Gumshoe. (If you're wondering what a lexicomane is, it's a lover of dictionaries.)

Bring up the subject of language and I'll talk your ear off. Hand me a dictionary and I'm lost in its pages for a week. Ask me to find an obscure word and I won't sleep until I track it down. I am an unrepentant, irremediable word nerd and proud of it, for language is the most pleasant obsession I know.

Day and night, weekday and weekend, I am drawn to the luminescent screen of my computer, there to wrestle with strand upon strand of sticky syntax. If you want to find me, listen for a bunched clamor of keystrokes. Look for a forehead furrowed from straining over where to place a comma or delete a word. Look for eyes gone blank from focusing too long on the cobwebs quivering in the corner of the ceiling. Look for a man seduced by the sound of syllables and caught in the web of words.

If you are a fellow woolgatherer in the world of words, or simply an inquisitive visitor searching for verbal entertainment or enlightenment, I invite you explore my website and learn more about my work.

When I tell people I'm a writer and they ask what I write, my stock answer is,
"I write about the English language for a general audience." In other words, I don't write textbooks and I don't write academic tomes. I write popular reference books for people who want to learn more words or learn more about words.

For many years I have also been a radio commentator, and for five and a half years I hosted a weekly public radio talk show on language called A Way with Words.

At the top of this page, click on Biography to find out more about me. Click on
Writings to learn more about my books and articles. Click on Events for information on my upcoming book signings and speaking events.

I welcome your questions. You can contact me by clicking on WRITE TO CHARLIE in the "Quick Links" sidebar below.

Good words to you!


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