By JOHN POLLACK
The hardened vegetables, stalkers on death row, began chanting: "Lettuce out!" A gourd, sensing a plot, scanned the celery, but Cool Head Luke was already over the garden wall and into his getaway car. A Pinto, it wasn't mulch to look at, but the hot tomato behind the wheel sure was. Luke gave her a peck and told her to floret. "I'm a new man, Julie Anne," he said. "Head for Boston. I can blend in there—just arugula guy."
March 19 was National Corndog Day
For readers who can't stand puns, this tale of escape is both crime and punishment. For punsters, it is a cornucopia of 20 puns. But in the perpetual war of wit between those who would steal meanings and those who would lock them up, there is a middle ground—rules to pun by, most of which I've just broken.
Puns are at their best when spoken, because they derive most of their power from ambiguity—ambiguity that is often diminished in the act of writing. Spelling a word requires us to favor one meaning over another, which saps a pun of dual interpretations as soon as it is read. This is one reason puns enjoyed their heyday in English prior to the spread of the printing press.
Shakespeare and his audiences loved puns, both comic and serious—think, for example, of Richard III's unhappiness with the "glorious summer" made by "this sun of York." Since the Elizabethan era, though, the standardization of English and the pursuit of scientific certainty have elbowed the unruly pun out to the very margins of acceptability.
To avoid making an unwelcome pun, focus first on the meanings or associations the pun will evoke and only secondarily on humor. Contrary to popular perceptions, a pun doesn't have to draw a laugh or a groan. Its primary role is to serve as an intellectual hyperlink, a form of shorthand that lets us pack more meaning into fewer words. This is not an argument against funny puns, but effective humor usually flows from unexpected meaning. In 2006, for example, the New York Post announced President George W. Bush's dismissal of his long-serving Secretary of Defense with the headline RUMS FELLED.
Also, never underestimate the intelligence of your audience. As listeners, we constantly intuit meaning from incomplete and approximate information; this is intrinsic to every conversation. It's why we can hear "lettuce" and, in the right context, understand it as "let us." That said, if a listener or reader somehow misses or ignores your wit, just let it go quietly. Even a fine bottle of wine will languish from time to time, overlooked in the cellar.
And just because you can make a pun doesn't mean that you should. Quality counts, and others will consider you wittier for being selective in your wordplay. Remember, puns generally make great appetizers but rarely fare well as conversational entrees, so choose your puns carefully.
Finally, pun with pride. Not only do we need more levity in this world, but we owe our very literacy to the humble pun. It was frustrated ancient scribes who first realized the limitations of literal pictographs and began decoupling and recombining sounds, symbols and meanings—in short, punning—to invent history's first true alphabet. Without puns, you wouldn't be reading this newspaper—unless it were in hieroglyphs.
So the next time you're inspired to pun, make it count. With practice, it's as easy as pi.
—Mr. Pollack's new book is "The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics." —He is a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page C12Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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