How To Sprinkle Your Articles With Humor

-John Philipp

"There are very few good judges of humor, and they don't agree." Josh Billings

I've posted several articles on writing humor. One thing most everyone will agree with is that writing humor is hard work. You have to spend a lot of time looking for just the right word or phrase or device to put the sizzle in you writing.

Even then, how do you know others will think what you wrote is funny? Maybe your twisted, little mind is the only one laughing. Professional comedians try out their material over and over again, honing every nuance and inflection. The average writer definitely does not have the time or access to do that.

If you're writing an article that is meant to be humorous, these obstacles come with the territory. But, what if you'd like to add a little humor to a regular fiction or nonfiction piece, and you don't have the time, or the inclination, or your comedy muse is on an extended vacation?

My suggestion is Quote the Experts.

You can add humor to any article with a few well-placed quotes from people who get paid to be funny. A few sources:

• "The Comedy Thesaurus - 3,241 Quips, Quotes and Smartass Remarks" by Judy Brown organizes these funny lines by category. "
  

• Milton Berle's Private Joke File" book does the same, claiming to index over 10,000 items. I didn't count them myself, but I'm sure Uncle Miltie wouldn't exaggerate.
  

• The Internet is a bottomless pit of guffaws. To mention just a few: Jokes 2 Go.com has some funny lists sorted by category and Mike Durett's About.com Guide to Humor has a list of humor categories.

What I do when I need a funny quote is I type in the key words of the topic plus "humor" and hit the Google button. That usually gets me what I want. For example, I recently Googled for a quote about American politics and came up with a line by Ronald Reagan, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

I'll mention three places this can work for you. The first is at the beginning of your piece (as I did in this article) and starts you off on a good note.

A second place is in the middle, particularly using a quote about a key word in your topic such as, "Now I want to talk about computer programming, which, as Ron Heuse once said, "is a lot like sex. One mistake and you could have to support it the rest of your life."

The third place to use humorous quotes is (bet you guessed this) at the end. It can be a good way to summarize your message and leave the reader remembering your piece with a smile. And, so saying, I leave you with James Thurber's line, "Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility."

By the way, when you're trolling the Internet for humor, I'd like to point out that Anonymous was a pen name I used to use. I don't need that anymore, so I'd appreciate it, if you use one of my quips, you use my real name.

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John Philipp is a weekly humor columnist for four Marin County, California newspapers and has won numerous humor and memoir writing awards. His humor columns are posted at http://johnphilipphumor.gather.com/.
His wisdom (with Phil Prank's cartoons) is posted at Thought~Bytes http://thoughtbytes.gather.com/

I thought I'd share one of John's Thought~Bytes with you. You can find them on Gather.com at the link provided above. John publishes them every Wednesday.