Ask the Book Doctor
HUMOR FOR GRAMMARIANS
August 12, 2018
A few weeks ago I saw a funny list of items related to writing. I’d seen it before, but this time I decided to share it to my Zebra Communications Facebook page. It practically went viral, with more than nine thousand people viewing the list. It went like this:
A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
A question mark walks into a bar?
A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out--we don't serve your type."
A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
A synonym strolls into a tavern.
At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
A dyslexic walks into a bra.
A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.
On a roll, I added this one:
An exclamation mark stubbed a toe on the bar and said, "Damn!"
Later I added this:
A redundancy walked into a bar and said, “Give me a beer and a brew.”
Several people reacted with Likes and Loves, and I was amused.
I then added this:
An auxiliary verb would have walked into a bar if it could have.
The last item received the oddest reactions, as if no one knew what an auxiliary verb was. An auxiliary verb is a verb paired with another verb; hence “would have” and “could have.” Maybe I went too far. Maybe so many things walked into the bar that it hit capacity level.
Jokes aside, perhaps only grammarians catch the humor. Nevertheless, I thought I’d snatch it from Facebook and turn it into a blog to keep it for posterity.
If you don’t understand some of the references, don’t walk into a bar to drown your sorrows. Send me an email or comment on my blog, and I’ll be glad to explain.