CHARLIE'S LATEST BOOKHOW ACCIDENT-PRONE
ARE YOU? Can you find all the accidents of style in the following sentence? (Hint: There are six.) As the number of divorces continue to soar, it begs the question why so many young women like Sarah and myself are still so anxious to say "'til death do us part". For the answer, click on The Accidents of Style under Books in the Selected Works sidebar on the right. To read Charlie's collection of The Latest Outrageous Accidents of Style, click on Writings in the menu bar above. DON'T SAY IT AGAIN, SAM
When The New York Review of Books recently offered me an 18-week subscription for just ten bucks, how could I refuse? At that price, at least I could be confident I wasn't paying for the ink to print all those pretentious and ponderous footnotes that clog the reviews. As it turned out, though, I was unwittingly subsidizing the occasional redundancy. In her review "Mind Control and the Internet" (June 23, 2011), Sue Halpern writes, "Chorost suggests that the reason the Internet as we now know it does not foster the kind of empathy he sees coming in the Web of the future . . . is because it is not yet an integral part of our bodies." As Patricia T. O'Conner points out in Woe Is I, "because means 'for the reason that,'" so if you write the reason is because you are writing that the reason is for the reason that. In her book Word Court, Barbara Wallraff calls the reason . . . is because "a notorious little waste of words." To fix the redundancy, simply recast the sentence using either the reason . . . is that or, even better, just because: "Chorost suggests that the Internet as we now know it does not foster the kind of empathy he sees coming in the Web of the future . . . because it is not yet an integral part of our bodies." CHARLIE'S
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Welcome, Word Lovers!You have landed at the website of writer, radio commentator, and lexicomane Charles Harrington Elster, aka 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. 
The Grandiloquent Gumshoe scours the pages
of the Oxford English Dictionary.
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 cohosted a weekly public radio talk show on language called A Way with Words. I am also a voice talent, with more than 25 years experience narrating audio programs and books. If you'd like to listen to my voice demo, click on the link to my talent agent's website in "Quick Links" in the sidebar on the right side of this page. 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, and also to read my list of The Latest Outrageous Accidents of Style. Click on Events for information on my book signings, speaking events, and radio interviews. And click on Blog to take a word quiz and read my ravings and musings about language, writing, and the writer's life.
You're also welcome to share your thoughts or post a question about language on my Comments page. If you would like to contact me directly and privately, click on WRITE TO CHARLIE in the "Quick Links" sidebar to the right. Good words to you! 
The lexicomane with his first love,
Webster's New International Dictionary, second edition, 1934.
Charlie at the 2011 TwainFest in Old Town San Diego, where he read Twain's 70th-birthday speech.
Entire contents of this website Copyright © 2003-2011 by Charles Harrington Elster. All rights reserved. |
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