Punny!

Back in January I had to sit in on a class about writing techniques in order to hone my writing skills in preparation for my thesis. To lighten the learning atmosphere our prof handed out the usual list of tongue-in-cheek writing advise, with things such as...

3. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
13. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than overstatement.

and my personal favorite, which was a new one to me...

34. Puns are for children, not groan readers!

But this last rule is apparently not binding in all situations. Note this delightful sentence from a New York Times article about finding a semi-colon in the most unlikeliest of places...

"One of the school system’s most notorious graduates, David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who taunted police and the press with rambling handwritten notes, was, as the columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver. (Mr. Berkowitz, by the way, is now serving an even longer sentence.)"
Ha! I love it!

Comments

Rachelle said…
How consecutively do I have to blog to get my name changed back to something respectable on your homepage? I'm willing to put in the work. :-)
6:39 PM
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