It’s fairly safe to say that no one knows how to write humor. The great modern humor essayists – Dave Barry, P. J. O’Rourke, and the late Lewis Grizzard and Erma Bombeck, among many others –do it naturally, instinctively knowing just what turn of phrase and clever irony readers will find funny, but they probably couldn’t even begin to explain how they do it. People who are not great humor writers, obviously, don’t know either.

I am not a humor writer of any kind, despite the occasional witticisms I might accidentally drop into my prose from time to time, so if you are an aspiring humor writer, you will not find any useful tips here. But styles and genres of writing that are not, strictly speaking, “humor writing,” can benefit from appropriate placement of a humorous phrase, joke, or anecdote. I won’t try to tell you how to make something funny, but I will try to summarize when humor can be used to maximum effect, and when it is best avoided.

Why Use Humor?

First, why would you use humor in this first place? Unless the humor is there for its own sake, the humor usually is used to engage the reader. Most people enjoy funny things, so putting funny things in your writing is a way to draw the readers in and keep them interested. Humor often makes a piece of writing more memorable, so it can also be used to help your readers retain the information you’re giving them. Finally, humor can be persuasive; this is why many of the most effective advertisements (print, broadcast, or Internet) are funny.

When to Use It?

Humor can have different effects, depending on where it’s applied:

• Throughout: Starting off with humor and sprinkling it throughout the piece can keep your readers engaged, encouraging them to stick with it. This is a sort of “carrot and stick” that can keep readers engaged to material that would otherwise be dry or less than gripping.
• Beginning: Starting off with a joke or humorous anecdote is an effective way to introduce your subject. The challenge here is finding something appropriate that can plausibly relate to your message without seeming forced.
• Ending: Ending an otherwise non-humorous piece with humor tends to be less effective, and even jarring to the reader. It can be useful sometimes, so if it fits, don’t be afraid to use it.
• Sandwich: Starting and ending a piece with humor is a nice way to bring it all together, especially if the humor at the end is somehow related to the humor at the beginning. For example, starting off with a joke about lawyers and ending with a different joke about lawyers (or extending the first lawyer joke) can neatly wrap it up.

When Not to Use It

As useful as humor can be in your writing, sometimes it’s just not appropriate:

• Writing for translation: Some humorous elements, especially puns, don’t translate well. A joke that makes perfect sense in English can go right past readers in other languages, or even confuse them. If your writing is going to be translated, it’s best to leave the humor out.
• Developing official/technical documents: Humor rarely has a place in policies, procedures, and legal documents (although it sometimes turns up in judges’ opinions). In these types of documents, avoiding ambiguity is more important than having engaging prose – and humor is notorious for its risk of being misinterpreted.
• Incorporating questionable material: It goes without saying that if you are using humor for rhetorical effect, and not as the main motivation for the writing, anything potentially offensive should be avoided. What qualifies as “offensive” may differ from one audience to the next, so knowing your audience is key. When in doubt, leave it out.
• Overdoing it: Applying too much humor can drown out your actual message. Remember your purpose: In most nonfiction writing, your goal is to instruct or persuade, not to entertain. Even fiction writing can be derailed by incorporating too many funny bits.

Final Thoughts

It’s difficult to be funny on demand. Even professional comedians have a hard time doing it. If you don’t have a natural “funny bone,” you can still incorporate humor by referring to other humorous sources, such as TV sit-coms, movies, comic strips, and stand-up comedians. (Just make sure you attribute it appropriately so you aren’t plagiarizing.) If you’re making up your own stuff, get someone else to read it before you publish – if it gets a laugh, it’s probably on the right track. If not, you might want to rethink it. Poorly-executed humor is often worse than none at all.

Morris Vaughan is a technical writing consultant in Los Angeles, California.