To pun, or not?

Puns (also known as ‘paronomasia’) are like lexical Marmite. A common literary or rhetorical device for creating humour, this form of wordplay is loved or hated: they easily grab attention, yet risk being ridiculed and even considered clichéd.

Monty Python’s John Cleese once said there were three rules for writing comedy: “No puns, no puns, no puns.” It’s easy to see Cleese’s point – no comedian wants to hear groans rather than laughs from their audience.

Born to pun?

But how should content creators treat puns? Can you afford to use them when they evoke love and hate in other works of writing?

French philosopher and 1927 Nobel literature prize winner Henri Bergson defined puns as sentences or word phrases where:

“the same sentence appears to offer two independent meanings, but it is only an appearance; in reality there are two different sentences made up of different words, but claiming to be one and the same because both have the same sound”.

On this basis, puns work by exploiting readers’ knowledge of both vocabulary and pertinent topics of the day.

The art of paronomasia was more highly regarded in the past: indeed, Shakespeare was a liberal user, as was Dickens. Robert Tressell offered social commentary through the names of fictional disreputable businesses like Dauber & Botchit in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, published posthumously in 1914.

Press for rhyme

Britain’s tabloid press holds the opposite view to Cleese, perhaps because of a pun’s power to offer readers an instant grasp of a topic via a headline. (Admittedly, this may not have helped the argument in support of puns.)

Serious issues can be thrown into a distasteful parallel universe with a misjudged pun. For instance:

“How do you solve a problem like Korea”

This Sound of Music-inspired headline in The Sun about Kim-Jong Il’s nuclear arms testing in 2006.

Or take this modification of Wham! lyrics after singer George Michael was involved in a motorway crash:

“Scrape me up before you go slow”

The all too stark lesson for content creators partial to a pun is to rein it in – it’s easy to lose your audience and trivialise your work with a careless pun.

On the flipside, small businesses tend to make excellent capital of puns in their names: hairdressing salons called ‘Snip off the Old Block’, chip shops called ‘The Codfather’ and so on are easily memorable and give rise to at least a smile for passers-by. In the digital age, catchy names have an additional positive function: these businesses are likely to be found on Instagram or Twitter, posted by amused pedestrians with a smartphone camera. Free marketing is always a bonus.

Just be sure that the headline is suitable for your content. It’s best not to bother rather than shoehorn an amusing pun in and risk it not being understood in relation to the wider context of your words.

Exclusivity is another risk: if puns rely on people’s knowledge of a saying, title or catchphrase, then it needs to be popularly known or employ common language. Content creators need to decide whether amusing the audience is more important than creating an understandable message that converts into a lead or a sale.

With these caveats in mind, test out your puns on co-workers; there’s no reason why this literary device shouldn’t have a role to play in content marketing.

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