Having written more than 60 books and thousands of articles and columns, I, your fly-by-the-roof-of-the mouth, user-friendly language columnist, confess to be afflicted with graphomania. Derived from the Greek roots grapho, “writing,” and mania, “obsession,” graphomania is “an obsessive inclination to write.” I am a graphomaniac.
I also harbor an obsessive inclination to collect and create funny squibs about language. Here are two cute stories about children growing up in the age of computers:
The kindergarten class was discussing, the topic of prayer and the children seemed aware that the way you end a prayer was with amen. “Does anyone know what amen means?” the teacher asked.
There was a long silence. Then one little boy piped up and said, “Well, I think it means, like, ‘send’.”
A group of third-grade pupils were sitting in a circle with their teacher. She was going around in turn asking them all questions about animals:
“Davy, what noise does a cow make?”
“It goes moo.”
“Alice, what sound does a lamb make?”
“It goes baa.”
“Jimmy, what noise does a cat make?”
“It goes meow.”
“Jennifer, what sound does a mouse make?”
“Uhm . . ., it goes . . . click!”
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A school principal came into a teacher’s classroom and said she was spending too much time teaching about commas because they weren’t really that important in communicating content. So the teacher had a student write the sentence “The principal says the teacher is wrong” on the board and then asked the principal to put a comma after the word principal and another after the word teacher.
The result, of course, was “The principal, says the teacher, is wrong.”
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What do you say to comfort a friend who’s struggling with grammar? “There, their, they’re.”
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It’s helpful if you imagine your auto-correct to be a tiny gremlin inside your computer who tries hard to be helpful but who is, in fact, quite drunk and subject to Inconsonants and Irritable Vowel Syndrome. Breaking news! The inventor of auto-correct has died. His funnel will be held tomato.
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The best online password is “incorrect.” Why? Because every time you key in the wrong password, your computer will remind you that “Your password is incorrect.”
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Always remember to keep your eyes on the prize, your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel, your hand on the tiller, your face to the wind, your chin up, your ear to the ground, and your foot on the pedal. Then go see your chiropractor.
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I recently attended the immersive Van Gogh experience at the Del Mar fairgrounds. 300 paintings. 2 million pixels, original music — spectacular! The only downer was that I didn’t have enough Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh!
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Some of you may wonder how my wife puts up with living with a compulsive punster. Well, the other day, I said to her, “Did you hear my last pun?” She replied, “I sure hope so!”
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Are you feeling stressed these days? Simply reverse the letters in stressed and eat a lot of desserts.
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Almost everyone knows the riddle “Why did the chicken cross the road? / To get to the other side.”
Variations on that model almost always involve changing the punchline, as in Why did the chicken cross the road? / Because it was faster than going around it or “Why did the chicken cross the road? / Because he saw Colonel Sanders coming at him with a cleaver.
Here’s the only variation I know in which the lead-in changes and the punchline remains intact: Why did the chicken participate in the séance? / To get to the other side!
Can any of you readers come up with another example like that one?