By Jerry Bellune
Compelling Writing for September 2025: 13 ways you can write humor
Do you think your newspaper, blog or broadcast has little space or time for wit? Think again.
Here’s how Sarah Needleman (great byline) began a Wall Street Journal article about what a few landlords are doing about puppy poop:
About once a month, Sinie Beck drops a small plastic bag with a foul odor outside the manager’s office of her Minot, N.D., apartment building.
Beck, a 38-year-old stand-up comic and dog walker, isn’t playing a prank. She’s trying to help her landlord identify owners of hounds who leave a mess by gathering evidence for DNA testing.
“I am the poop patrol,” she says.
If you have not written humor that makes readers (and editors) laugh, it can be harder than you think.
A few seem born with it. The rest of us work at it.
“I have seen what a laugh can do,” comedian Bob Hope said. “It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.”
Prairie Home Companion radio funny man Garrison Keillor’s humor is self-deprecating: “One thing that bothers me is the difficulty of putting on underpants while standing, left leg held high and poked through the hole, then the right which I’ve done since I was a kid, and now at 81 I can sometimes still perform but then comes a bad experience – the left foot catches the underpants crotch and you lose your balance and suddenly you’re headed for a tragic accident. I do not want my obit to read ‘The author died at home of a concussion while trying to pull on his briefs. No foul play was suspected.’”
Here are 13 tips from TheWritingKing.com:
• Know your audience. What a college student likes might be different from that of a retired professional. Tailor your humor accordingly.
• Be authentic. Humor comes from your life. Emulating another’s style comes across as insincere.
• Use humor to complement your message, Make sure your humor enhances your points.
• Master timing. Strategic placement of humor significantly increases its impact.
• Experiment with different styles. You can try numerous styles of humor including sarcasm, irony, wit and slapstick. Experiment with different styles to see what resonates best with readers and viewers.
• Study such writers as Mark Twain, Erma Bombeck, Will Rogers, Ambrose Bierce, Dorothy Parker, James Thurber, Art Buchwald, Dave Barry, Jean Kerr, Kurt Vonnegut, Woody Allen, Jane Herlong, Lewis Grizzard, Jeff Foxworthy and Dr. Seuss.
• Use humor in dramatic or tense situations to create an intriguing contrast that adds depth.
• Revise your humor. Read it aloud.
• Avoid offensive humor about nationality, race, religion, gender, or other sensitive topics. You want laughter, not anger.
• Humor can enhance your writing. Overusing it detracts from your message.
• If humor isn’t natural, don’t force it. That may seem insincere and manipulative.
• Relate to your audience. Steer clear of jargon.
• Don’t assume all readers have the same sense of humor. It’s impossible to please everyone but aim for humor for a wide range of readers.
Compelling Writing for October 2025: Separating fact from fake news
The internet and social media were not around in 1710 when Jonathan Swift wrote: “Falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it.”
It’s no secret that false or fake news is rampant online, writes award-winning journalist Amanda Ruggeri.
What’s even worse is disinformation — fake news deliberately intended to mislead us.
Research has found that misinformation travels faster than true information. One reason is that we are far more likely to share a claim that confirms our beliefs, regardless of accuracy. One study found that 15% of news sharers spread up to 40% of fake news.
Ruggeri suggests using the “SIFT” strategy to fact check and separate truth from fiction.
• S is for Stop. Fast-paced news cycles and content can make us think it is “urgent.. Research has found that relying on our immediate “gut” reactions is likely \to fool us.
Question it. Don’t share or comment on it.
• I is for Investigate. News often os not clear who created it. It may come from a friend or by an algorithm. We may follow creators but never looked into their backgrounds.
Find out who sent this? Do a web search. Because search results can be misleading, make sure you’re looking at a reputable website.
Wikipedia is not perfect but has the benefit of being crowd-sourced. That means its articles about well-known people or organizations cover controversies and political biases.
Ask if it came from a reputable media source. Are they reputable and respected, with a recognized commitment to verified, independent journalism?
What expertise do they have? What are their financial ties, political leanings or personal biases? What is their purpose? What do they advocate, propose or sell? Who funds them? Would you trust their expertise if they sent anything you disagreed with?
• F is for Find better coverage. If find you wonder about the source’s credibility, dig deeper. Has a known source, reputable news outlet or fact-checking service, reported and verified the same claim. DuckDuckGo and Google have some of the best tools to do this.
The Google Fact Check search engine finds fact-checking sites but doesn’t vet them. To make sure the news is true, go to Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network.
If you’re checking a photo, use a reverse image search tool to see where else the image comes up on Google, TinEye and Yandex. For video, put a screenshot in your image search.
• T is for Trace claims for original context. Find out where the news came from.
Even if a claim has been reported by a credible source it may not be original reporting but come from elsewhere. The original story should be linked. If not, search for it separately.
You want to know whether this is true and if it was taken out of context.
In checking an image, does how it was described online match its original caption, context and location? If it’s a quotation, was anything edited out or taken out of context?
Looking for something to reward your stars? Consider giving them a copy of The Art of Compelling Writing. It’s available on Amazon.com.
The above will appear in The Art of Compelling Writing, Volume 3, which is already in the works. Volume 1 and 2 are available at Amazon. These books were published to help editors like you teach your reporters how to report and write well. To comment or with questions, please write [email protected]
