This guest post, by the author of Word Up! How to Write Powerful Sentences and Paragraph (And Everything You Build from Them) , previously appeared on How to Write Everything on Dec. 4, 2013.
Wonky words. You can find them anywhere: on billboards, on beer bottles, on bus-stop signs. I’m talking about words that make you go hmmm. I’m talking about the kind of writing that makes word nerds groan.
Why stop at groaning? Let’s have some fun with these egregiosities. I propose writing captions for them. I do that on my Pinterest board “Wonky & Wondrous Words in the World.” (I owe my inspiration for this board to Jacquie Samuels’s TechWhirl post “Pinterest: What My Mother Can Teach You About Content Strategy and Technical Communications.” ) I’d lay odds that caption writing, like bridge playing and crossword puzzling, staves off Alzheimer’s. Even if it doesn’t, caption writing provides an endless source of free entertainment.
Here are some wonky and awkward wording examples that I’ve photographed and captioned.
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1. Why don’t they? -
2. Under neat that, we will not pay for this cake. (This book is a hilarious collection of wonky words on cakes. See >www.cakewrecks.com. ) -
3. Where can I trespass, then? -
4. Can I get shoup with that? -
5. No telling what the Black Spoon Promise is. -
6. Why? What did it do? -
7. Good to know. Wait. Isn’t this an envelope? -
8. They has come a long way. -
9. I just want to know … flush up or down? -
10. DO NOT—WE REPEAT, DO NOT—THROW THESE INSTRUCTIONS AWAY. THEY’RE USEFUL. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. -
11. A happy child cape, though, you can forget about. (I mocked up this bumper sticker to match the one that got away before I could photograph it.) -
12. Maybe on the back. -
13. You get the best gluten—and free pizza. All without leaving town. -
14. Naming a road “Gravel” is like naming a person “Baby.”