5 Great Examples of Using Humor in Writing
Photo by Armin Rimoldi: https://www.pexels.com/photo/asian-male-sitting-on-fence-with-notebook-5554286/
by Michelle
This April Fool’s, want to know a nice way to show a little more personality in a college essay? Humor.
Does a college essay have to be serious all the time? No.
Do you have to use humor in your college essays to make it a good essay? No, not necessarily. But reading this post can also help boost your writing techniques in general for any kind of narrative or personal writing.
What are some ways you can use humor in writing?
Before we jump into the examples, as an important tip for your essays, you want to avoid shock humor or merely relying on swear words for humor. Even more importantly, definitely avoid making jokes that are disrespectful towards ethnic groups, cultures, disabilities, religions, gender, or LGBT identities.
There’s a difference between making jokes meant for an in-group and jokes that mock the powerful, versus making cruel jokes about groups with less social power.
There is a reason why in the fairytale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, the crowd laughs at the rich and powerful emperor who has no clothes. In contrast, it wouldn’t be very funny if a crowd pointed at a poor peasant and laughed at them for being too poor to buy a good shirt.
If the kind of humor you are writing is something that could make you sound sexist or racist? Don’t use it. If the sentence is not the kind of humor you would use in front of a grandparent? You might reconsider using it.
To return to the main point, comedians and writers like P.G. Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, and Hasan Minhaj (who graduated from UC Davis and starred in his own comedy special ‘Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King’) have all used humor to great effect to tell their stories. You can too!
What are 5 great examples of humor that you can learn from for your college essays?
1. A Surprise Twist
Take a look at this scene ‘Who broke the coffeepot?’ from the TV show Parks and Rec.
[Ron Swanson: Who broke it? I’m not mad, I just wanna know.
Leslie Knope: I did. I’m the one who broke it.
Ron: No. No you didn’t.
Tom: Don’t look at me. Look at Ben!
Ben: What!? I didn’t even touch it before it was broken!
Everyone in the office slowly starts arguing about the person who broke the coffeepot.
Ron, towards the camera while everyone is fighting: I broke it. It burned my hand, so I punched it. ]
Why is this scene funny?
At the end of the clip, Ron Swanson, the boss of their office and the very person who asked who broke the coffeepot, reveals that he was the one who broke the very coffeepot everyone was arguing over. The viewer’s understanding of the situation is changed at the end, and nicely highlights the humor in the situation.
2. A Humorous Observation that is Truthful
The Onion, an especially famous parody newspaper with fake satirical articles, is well known for using this technique:
ChatGPT Forced to Take Bar Exam Even Though Dream was to be AI Art Bot
What this headline does well with its humorous observation is its nod to current events by mentioning an AI, as well making an observation on the common trope of a student interested in the arts being pushed towards a field that others consider to be more prestigious, like law.
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, another humor site, also likes employing this technique for its articles.
I’d Like to Call Out Which Parts of the Group Project Were Mine
At some point, most students would have worked on a group project had felt like they had done more work than the other members, which this article touches on. The humor in the headline could also be categorized similarly with the examples in #5 – Relatable Feelings.
3. Something Goes Against Expectations (Irony)
You likely ran into a definition for irony in your high school literature class – “a situation where there is a contrast between expectations and reality” (MasterClass on Irony).
If you have ever watched any Tom and Jerry episodes as a kid, you probably have seen this in action. The cat, Tom, would set down a mousetrap to catch Jerry the mouse. However, while chasing Jerry, Tom might end up stepping on the trap instead of catching Jerry as expected.
In an application essay, you may be able to use irony to contrast what the reader expects to happen and the reality of what actually happens in your personal story, while also adding humor. A time your perspective changed on a person, or a time a situation happened in an opposite way that you expected could be good places for you to consider using irony.
4. Sarcasm/‘Dry humor’ that demonstrates a surprising reaction to a tough situation
Most students would know what this is. A lot of TV quips in dialogue show sarcasm, or it also shows up in newspaper comics like Calvin and Hobbes. ‘Dry humor’ also can show up a lot in both movies and British genre literature (e.g. when asked what the weather is like outside during a heavy thunderstorm, a character might answer ‘it’s just a little sprinkle’) .
It may be better not to go overboard and rely on using too much sarcasm in an application essay, but a line here and there could make a paragraph stand out more.
5. Relatable Feelings
This type of humor makes people laugh because of how it connects to common experiences and feelings that others have also experienced before. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if the experience is a little bit niche, as long as it describes a feeling that one other person can relate with.
Think of examples like the episode where Spongebob Squarepants procrastinates writing an essay for hours or stories from others about being nervous on the first day of school or instances where the writer could show some sense of vulnerability.
There are other humorous techniques beyond the 5 examples listed here, like exaggeration and parody, but this list of techniques should help illustrate to Essay Narwhals how they might not only craft a compelling piece, but also a fun essay to read.