Charles Harrington Elster

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"Give me my typewriter and my dictionary, and just let me suffer!"
— Robertson Davies

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

"Nearly every fiction writer in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope, and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom."
— Roald Dahl

WORD QUIZ

Below are ten abbreviations of Latin terms. Do you know what they stand for in Latin and in English?

1. MS or ms.
2. PS or P.S.
3. i.e.
4. e.g.
5. N.B. or n.b.
6. c. or ca.
7. et al.
8. cf.
9. q.v.
10. ibid.

Answers are on the
Comments page.

To Err Is Inhuman

“I’m afraid that surprise, shock, and regret is the fate of authors when they finally see themselves on the page. . . . Seeing one’s inadequate English frozen into type is a humiliating experience.” — Julia Child, My Life in France

“I think of it as it could have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened, its fads eliminated, its truths multiplied.” — From the dedication page of
H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926)

CHARLIE'S LATEST

The Accidents of Style is a crash course in careful usage.

The Accidents of Style is in USA Today.

Click here to order.

Click here to read it.

Copyright © 2003-2013
by Charles Harrington Elster.

Note: Everything in this blog, and on this website, is protected by copyright. Reproduction of any kind without permission is prohibited.

One Writer's Ravings

A Logogogue's Blog for Language Lovers

Where Did You Learn That Word?

January 10, 2011

Tags: William Styron, H. L. Mencken, Sir Walter Scott, Herman Melville, Vladimir Nabokov, William F. Buckley, Robertson Davies

Some readers are annoyed when a writer uses an unusual word. I’m thrilled.

All my life I’ve read hoping to find words I don’t know, keeping lists of them and looking them up in a dictionary, where I would then come across more words I’d never seen before. I’ve never read only for pleasure or for information. For me, reading has always been a word-hunting expedition, a lexical safari. (more…)

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