Category: humor

Happy Halloween

Here’s a classic from Stephen Fry with lots of punny fun and English silliness to celebrate Halloween:

Inspiring, creative, and lovely book dedications

Today while looking for examples to help a client phrase a dedication, I came across this lovely list of book dedications. Including many well-known writers and titles, it’s a pleasure to browse: 30 Awesome Book Dedications that Might Be Better Than the Actual Book by Chrissy Stockton

Pen jibes and stinging ink

Do writers devise the best insults? Hephzibah Anderson for BBC Culture looks at some of the most biting words writers aim at each other: Who was called “A great cow full of ink”?

Who or whom? A fun lesson

Here’s an amusing primer from TheOatmeal.com, about how to choose and why you should bother: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/who_vs_whom

Lost in translation

Usually I don’t judge too harshly when I see translation errors while traveling. I appreciate the effort to provide information in English and can overlook misspelling and other sometimes-cute errors. However this caught my eye and deserves some criticism because it’s an awkward translation that a major international hotel chain is using. They clearly have …

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The Chaos – Gerard Nolst Trenité (1922)

Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye, your dress you’ll tear; Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer. Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat …

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Quotation

He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met. -Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)

Holiday party game: punctuation goes wild

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

Bad opening sentences are enthusiastically welcomed at the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Thousands of original entries vie for the title of ‘worst’ in a number of categories. The 2012 deadline is June 30. Details and last year’s winners can be found at Bulwer-Lytton.com Selecting a favorite from the 2011 winners is difficult. I offer you …

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