Charles Harrington Elster

Charles Harrington Elster (1957, New York City) is an American writer, broadcaster, and logophile. In 1998, he, along with Richard Lederer, became founding cohosts of the weekly public radio show A Way with Words. After five and a half years, Elster left the show and was replaced by journalist and writer Martha Barnette.

Elster is the author of numerous books about language, including the adult vocabulary-building programs Word Workout and Verbal Advantage; the high school vocabulary-building novels Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the SAT and Test of Time: A Novel Approach to the SAT and ACT; The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, which the late William Safire of The New York Times called "the most readable, sensible, and prescriptive guide to the words that trip us up"; The Accidents of Style: Good Advice on How Not to Write Badly; There's a Word for It, a lighthearted guide to unusual but unusually useful words; and What in the Word? Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to Your Peskiest Questions About Language.

Mr. Elster wast a consultant for Garner's Modern American Usage and he is the pronunciation editor of Black's Law Dictionary. He is also a voice talent with more than 25 years' experience recording educational material, industrials, and books—including his own Verbal Advantage and Word Workout.