Funny Business. Michael MDiv Dolan
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Funny Business
Putting Humor
In Your Writing
2nd Edition, 2011
All applicable rights reserved by the publisher.
Published in eBook format by Dolan Management
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ISBN-13: 978-0-9710-1822-8
Dolan Management
1001 SW 5th Ave #1100
Portland OR 97204-1127
“Humor is one of God's most marvelous gifts. Humor gives us smiles, laughter, and gaiety. Humor reveals the roses and hides the thorns. Humor makes our heavy burdens light and smoothes the rough spots in our pathways. Humor endows us with the capacity to clarify the obscure, to simplify the complex, to deflate the pompous, to chastise the arrogant, to point a moral, and to adorn a tale.”
-- Sam Ervin, U.S. Senator from North Carolina (yes, the Watergate one)
“I don’t tell jokes. I tell the truth.”
-- Groucho Marx
“Humor is a universal language. It’s a contagious emotion and a natural diversion. It brings other people in and breaks down barriers. Humor is the one thing we can have control over. When someone is laughing, negative emotions are put in the background so that people are able to experience happier emotions.”
-- Ruth Hamilton, director of the Carolina Humor and Healing Association
“Almost every major figure in the history of philosophy has proposed a theory, but after 2500 years of discussion there has been little consensus about what constitutes humor.”
-- International Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Responsible Party
-- Michael Dolan,
trainer and author of
Write Better and Get Ahead at Work
Good Morning
You can find several books on humor. Many books on business. And plenty of books on writing. But hardly any on writing business humor. This book is a dawn of a new era. Except that it’s the expanded second edition so it must be the less heralded noonish of a new era.
You’ll find the information here to be useful for all forms of writing: memos, emails, reports, tweets and more. Write on paper or online. It all applies. In fact, there is nothing about the new media that overtakes the suggestions here. Brevity, after all, is the soul of wit. And brevity is exactly what today’s Internet-damaged brain craves so much. Much of this book is cheap and juvenile – just what online media excels at. Some of this book is not cheap and juvenile.
Although I tell you what to do in this book, I don’t expect you to just do that stuff. My goal here is to encourage new and creative humor. I will have accomplished my goal if no work place ever again is subjected to a blonde joke or a “Chinese” proverb. At the same time, I’ll give you the benefit of my long years of accidentally offending people. I know how to avoid that. Likely you are faced daily with the universally dreaded assistant department manager. He aches from lack of real authority so must daily show greater allegiance to his corporate master than you. Humor is not among his scarce skills. He or she may have a different title but these boobs are easy to identify. They are easy to handle but you can’t be sloppy. They can burn with envy when they fear your wit will make you popular.
Look for new ways to apply humor at work – even in unlikely places. A friend of mine says a good place for humor is collection letters. “People are having a hard time already,” she says. “So why not give them something to laugh about.” I can’t say I’ve seen this work. But she says she has a great collection rate and the work is less stressful. Funny business works in this unlikely place because her humor is a natural extension of her work style
And here is the first of many mentions of this technique: “Look it up.” One of the great values of the Internet is freeing writers from laboring over previously required but usually boring passages of background. You are likely a few key strokes away from a search engine. I try to avoid discussing what you can find easily online.
Whether you are the office wit with a history of funny or just a schlub looking for a way to draw attention, you’ll enjoy this book. It’s not about real business writing. I have another book for that, “”Write Better and Get Ahead at Work,” a practical thorough and serious effort, wielding humor only as counter point. “Funny Business” avoids the information in that tome, with only slight overlaps. The main one is coming up soon. It is George Orwell's Simple Rules for Writing.
1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other combination of words that you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word when a short one will do.
3. If you can cut a word, cut it.
[Or: When in doubt, leave it out.]
4. Prefer verbs in the active voice to verbs in the passive voice.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous
Aren't they neatly elegant? The thrust of the message in these rules is to rely on yourself. Don't copy other phrases just because you have seen them often in memos; create your own sentences unique to your situation. Instead of using long words or complicated wording in order to impress, write simply in plain language. Finally, be active. That's it. The key to effective writing at work—as elsewhere—is sincere expression of what's in your heart. Most writers need to remove the clutter of bad habits rather than add any skill they currently lack. These rules are from Orwell’s outstanding and enduring essay “Politics and the English Language.” Look it up. (See how the background plan works?)
George Orwell is one thinker I admire and respect. You will soon see another person I put in that same category is Steve Allen. If you combined George Orwell and Steve Allen, you would be arrested in 23 states (misdirection; see Chapter 3).
This book is totally practical. I mean it to go to work for you at work today. After dissecting exactly what a joke is, we cover main joke forms. Illustrations mostly come from the world of work. All types of work. Because funny is serious, I actually provide some history of how we got here – humor changes over time. And I provide high tone information about why humor is important and useful at work. While academic, this section too is useful in defense of your hilarious new personality.
The book is leavened with business humor. Of course, you would never steal this material or make slight alternations to apply to your situation. You would use it “homage” to this book, made all the more sacred by omitting credit.
That’s about enough of this. Now on to work!
The Basics