These Jokes May Drive You To Drink

by Kevin Burton

   Here’s a tip for you discerning eligible bachelors out there, one you may not have picked up on:

   Women dig grammar.

   In the 70s I would have said “chicks dig grammar,” but you never know when somebody, some female somebody, will stumble upon Page 7 for the first time.  First impressions, you know.

   Actually my research has revealed that grammar is sexy.  There are t-shirts and coffee mugs that reflect this.

   Gentlemen, those females who don’t dig grammar, maybe those aren’t the ones to introduce to your parents.  But for the lady who does, here are some jokes you can slip into casual conversation.

   I saw this first on Facebook and then on several other sites.  This is a list of variations on the “walks into a bar” joke.

   It was from one of those hilarious Southwest Airlines flight attendant/comedians that I heard this joke for the first time:

   “A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says ‘Hey, why the long face?’”

   That’s the level of humor we’re dealing with here today.  But we’re touching on grammar, punctuation and such, so that should make you tingle with anticipation. OK, here we go grammarians:

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

   There, wasn’t that fun?

   Haven’t had your limit? Here are some responses from readers on grammarbook.com.

• A period walks into a bar, full stop.

• An alliteration boldly bounces into a bar and later walks away with a wobble.

• An onomatopoeia walks into a bar without a sound.

•A double contraction walks into a bar, although it oughtn’t’ve.

•An ellipsis walks into a…well, it appeared to be a bar.

• An alliteration arrives at an authentic Alabama alehouse and asks for applejack.

•A synonym strolls into a tavern.

•An exaggeration walked into a stupendous bar and ordered an exquisitely elegant drink.

•An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening with his old friend, a drunk and a felon.