How To Create Witty Sayings

WHAT IS WIT?

Our purpose here is to explore what it takes to create witty sayings, particularly as used for humorous T-shirts and bumper stickers. In other contexts, these sayings may go under the names epigrams, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, and slogans. Take a look at the brief, well-phrased statements, and you will find many rhetorical devices. Rhetorical devices are divided into schemes and tropes: Schemes play with word choice and word order. Tropes play with shifts in meanings.

A wit is "an imaginatively perceptive and articulate individual." Articulate roughly corresponds to schemes; perceptive, to tropes, but these do not fully explain humorous wit. Humor also entails taking some variety of hostile attitude towards a topic. Here we explore the most useful schemes, tropes, and attitudes for creating witty lines.

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WHO NEEDS WIT?

Although we are focusing on humor, these techniques have a great many uses beyond humor and beyond self-expression products (beyond, that is, T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs,...). Advertising copy writers use wit for headings and memorable ad copy; speakers and ministers, to craft a "phrase that pays"; nonfiction writers, to add sparkle to their prose; fiction writers, to invent witty characters and telling descriptions; comedians, to craft one-liners, and all of them use them to seek immortality on the pages of Bartlett's.

For examples of titles or subtitles for panel discussions,take a look at Witty titles at the CWA Let's look at examples of several techniques.

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ANTITHESIS

Antithesis is one of the most used rhetorical devices. Antithesis involves placing a word and its opposite close together in the same positions in parallel phrases or clauses. For example, "Easy come, easy go."
For a longer discussion, see Opposites Attract Attention

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This has the single antithesis of genius and madman. The contrast of "others see none" and "there are none" is not strong enough to make me call this a double antithesis.

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This is double antithesis. The easiest way to construct double antithesis is to compare two things and see where they are the opposite.

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The contrast of "an object" vs. "two objects" may constitute an antithesis in this expression of irritation. Are they opposites? Is it antithesis? Does that really matter?

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CHIASMUS

Chiasmus is the repetition of a statement with the order of certain words or phrases reversed. For example:

Those who say, don't know.
Those who know don't say.
(Lao Tsu)

For a longer discussion, see Chiasmus

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This of course references the Socrates quote, "The unexamined life is not worth living." As a reaction to the Socrates quote, this is a maxim for living the good life, but some people are certain to interpret it as a pro choice slogan.

This doesn't state the full chiasmus. It implies chiasmus by referring to a well known statement. (Dr. Mardy Grothe coined the phrase "implied chiasmus" for this.)

Another example of implied chiasmus: "A hard man is good to find." (Mae West)

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TRICOLON

Tricolon is often called "the rule of threes" or "triples, the use of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses. Unless there is some good reason not to, put three items in a list.
For a longer discussion, see More Than Three Ways To Use Triples and More Ways To Use Triples

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These statements make a different sense as a group from what they would individually. "I'm auditioning for a bedroom farce," ceases to be a statement of possible fact and becomes a statement about the meaning, purpose and quality of life.

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REFORMING

"Reforming" is the replacement of words in a cliché with other, typically sound-alike words. For example, "You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think." (Dorothy Parker)

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This reforms two clichés, substituting sound-alike words. It keeps the anti-alcohol message, but relates it to being witty.

PROCEDURE FOR REFORMING CLICHÉS

You reform clichés backwards: you start with the word you wish to insert into a cliché and then find a cliché to put it into. For the word, you find other words that rhyme with or otherwise sound like it, find well known statements that contain those words, and replace the sound-alike word with the word you want.

To give yourself more opportunities, look up synonyms and antonyms for the word you wish to insert and try reforming each of them. Click here for a detailed procedure showing how the quip/jive statements were constructed.

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REPETITION OF SOUNDS

Repeated sounds can delight. There are several forms:

• Alliteration, repeating initial consonant sounds of (preferably stressed) syllables;
• Consonance, repeating consonant sounds, not necessarily initial;
• Assonance, repeating vowel sounds;
• Rhyme, repeating vowel sounds in stressed syllables, any trailing consonant sounds in those syllables, and perhaps the trailing unstressed syllables. (That's rhyme in English. Some languages do not have stressed syllables.)

Alliteration and rhyme are the strongest to use. For a longer discussion, see Repeat Sounds

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Here's quintuple alliteration.

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IRONY

Irony is really hard, you have to say the opposite of what you mean. One great use of irony is to convert hatred into humor. Hatred is not funny: it's not playful enough. If you must say you hate something, say you love it. Praise it for things people dislike.

Be warned: Irony is risky in writing. Without tone of voice to signal irony, people are likely to think you're serious. (For example, did the first statement in this section seem ironic?) You need huge exaggeration to let the reader know it's irony. Even the idea of eating children has not been wild enough to make irony clear. Dull people will think you are serious, and the stream of dull people never dries up.

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This might be an ironic comment on American war policy, or it might be a comment on the utter futility of existence. Notice that the image creates a context in which the caption is ironic and also a context for thinking of the Middle East.

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DOUBLE ENTENDRE

A double entendre is a statement that can be interpreted in two ways. Usually one of those ways is risqué. For a longer discussion, see Double Entendre

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Here we play with Freud's remark about cigars, using it to create a context for viewing the image. This is the reverse of the Victory/Corner design, where the image modified the caption. Even if people don't know the Freud/cigar story, the name Freud should make them look at the clam and see references to human sexuality.

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Strange isn't it that when something is said a bit unusually, people will immediately look for a sexual innuendo. Yin is the female principle, yang is the male, so this does make sense literally, but "have a yin" gets interpreted as yearning and "yang" is taken as slang.

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This relies on two meanings of "worldly." (It expresses irritation at the people who babble away about "spirituality." It's nice they're operating high enough up Maslow's hierarchy to seek self-actualization, but why must they seek to actualize us?)

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METAPHOR

Metaphor identifies one thing (the "tenor") with a different kind of thing (the "vehicle"), which is often more concrete than the tenor. The two need to have something in common (a "ground"). A metaphor allows you to transfer associations from the vehicle to the tenor: when you talk about the first, it is understood that you mean the second. Indeed, you don't have to state the metaphor explicitly for people to catch on.

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"Life is a manuscript is search of a good editor" is built on the metaphor LIFE IS A STORY. LIFE and STORY have a common ground: characters, motivations, actions, conflict. Here STORY is made concrete as a manuscript. (A life story is like a resume. It is always more impressive if you leave some things out.)

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"Some are actors, some are audience, and some are prompters clutching last year's script" expresses irritation at society's ideologues, who like to tell us just how we and everything else should be. It again uses the metaphor LIFE IS A STORY, this time using a play as the particular type of story.

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Here your mind is the tenor and a computer email program is the vehicle. Proselytizing is sending "spam" e-mails. (Some research indicates that the brightest people have the best "spam filters." Life is short, and mental processing capacity is limited.)

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This is NOT a metaphor. It merely classifies proselytizing into a category. (All these designs—clearly, I must be seriously irked at religion's insurance salesmen.)

PROCEDURE FOR FINDING METAPHORS

Start with the tenor and list its attributes and other associations you have for it. These are the potential ground. For each potential ground, list other things that have that association. These are potential vehicles. Check the things that you can say about a vehicle to see if they can be understood to speak about the tenor. Pick the vehicle you want, but then ask yourself, "What kind of that?"—make the vehicle more specific and concrete, and you make the metaphor more effective.
For a longer discussion, see Using Metaphors To Emphasize Common Ground , Use Metaphors To Transfer Associations , and A Procedure For Finding Metaphors

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LITERALISM

Many clichés are metaphors. You get instant humor out of taking them literally. "If everyone lit one little candle, imagine the air pollution." Alas, I don't have great examples of it in my designs.

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Intelligent Design is the new, more respectable Creationism. The Intelligent Designer is, of course, to be understood as God. Here we take the intelligent design literally and ask, "Who has really been intelligently designing species?" Answer: We are the intelligent designers of species on this planet, and we've been at it since the beginning of agriculture.

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ATTITUDES

Most wit is humorous, and humor is based on hostility. The easiest path to humor is to take a hostile attitude toward a topic and justify it. Melvin Helitzer gives us the acronym "THREES": A joke needs to have a Target, Hostility, Realism, Exaggeration, Emotional connection, and Surprise.

Judy Carter gives a formula for constructing jokes for stand up comedy: Make the set up out of a target, a hostile attitude, and a "premise," a general statement that justifies taking that attitude toward that topic. The punch lines support that premise. She suggests the attitudes that the subject is weird, hard, scary, or stupid. (She teaches building the punch lines by acting out the premise. For our purposes, we can just stop at a well-phrased premise.)

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CYNICISM

Cynicism is a traditional humorous attitude. Cynicism is scornful, or at least jaded. Cynicism does not believe in, indeed often disdains common human values. Cynicism is an easy attitude to take on, and it puffs up the cynic. Cynicism pretends to have special knowledge: There is a secret, hidden meaning to things, and it's not nice.

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The irony rubs in this thoroughly cynical view of life.

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SATIRE

Satire uses irony, derision, and wit to ridicule human folly, incompetence, vice, corruption, and evil. Hence, there are limitless opportunities for satire. Satire can be justified as an attempt to correct these problems, but for us, satire is just a way to do funny T-shirt and bumper sticker designs.

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The Rapture is the mythical instant when the saved will be lifted up to heaven, out of their cars and clothes. It is a pernicious folly: it invites people not to plan for their or their children's futures; it justifies not trying to make the world a better place. It deserves satire.

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SARCASM

"Sarcasm" comes from a Greek word for removing flesh from bones. Sarcasm is intended to wound, to heap contempt on, or to ridicule its victim. Sarcasm is dangerous to use. Beyond the risk of being assassinated in retaliation, sarcasm may elicit sympathy for the victim—exactly the opposite of what you want. Nevertheless, you certainly know some groups or individuals worthy of sarcasm.

Here's a little ironic sarcasm. The "(yeah, right)" may not be necessary, but it makes the irony clearer.

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REVERSALS

A straightforward way to get humor is to take a situation and suddenly reverse our understanding of it, or take a common attitude about something and reverse it. You argue that what we think is good is really bad (cynicism) or that which we think bad is actually good.

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This uses implied antithesis of lemon and sugar. It reverses the attitude that life is basically good and converts this saccharine platitude into a pleasantly cynical observation.

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WIT IS RHETORIC

Wit is mostly rhetoric. We've just looked at a number of the most useful techniques of wit. Try them out in your own aphorisms, maxims, epigrams and T-shirt and bumper sticker slogans.

GO TO A PAGE
ON HOW TO PUT YOUR WIT
ON T-SHIRTS AND
SELL THEM ON THE WEB

We have been selling our own T-shirts and other self-expression products over the web without having to maintain any inventory. In this article, I tell you how you can do it too. You can create something utterly unique for yourself, create something for your club or organization, and maybe find a self-financing hobby. Maybe you'll get rich selling them over the web. (It'd be nice if one of us did.)

GO TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY AND WEB RESOURCE PAGE

Here is a bibliography and a collection or links to web resources.