semantics? From an e-mail message: "One of America's greatest living mathematicians, Bill Thurston, has died."
A ode to a spell checker: http://people.usd.edu/~bwjames/humor/spell.html
A missing comma problem from a newspaper (not sure which one), quoted in dozens of places (often with a scan of the newspaper clipping): "The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall."
An unusually honest quote from Gerald McNerny of Motorola [NY Times 27 Oct 2009, p B5]: "You put your brand at risk if one of your devices has an issue with the battery. What we've done is look at creating backups, duplicity in development so that you're not going to have an explosion."
A great (ambiguous) headline from Forbes, 3 Jan 2008: "Luminex shares fly on flu test".
Here is a joke from the newsgroup rec.humor.funny about resumes and job interviews.
A page of humorous illustrations from tech manuals: http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/hall/
From a posting on the "This is TRUE" weekly mailing
http://www.thisistrue.com:
FULLY DOCUMENTED: U.S. intelligence agents say they have intercepted a
terrorism "manual" used by Osama bin Laden to train recruits. The
1,000-page manual includes instructions on assembling bombs, shooting
guns, recruiting followers and carrying out assassinations, they say.
The manual, on a CD-ROM, was seized by intelligence officers in
Jordan. (AP) ...The intelligence community needn't worry. Any
technical writer can tell them that no one ever reads the manual.
Here is a nice example of the importance of spaces:
I never yodel in Germany.
In every ode linger many.
From an otherwise well-written article by Karen Solomon (San Francisco Chronicle, 26 sept 2007, page F3) comes the lovely paragraph
"The whole point is to enhance the parenting experience," agrees Pri
Pri co-owner Kei Cano-Katsunuma, mother of a 4-year-old expecting her
second child in December. "I wanted a place where I could feel
comfortable if the baby started whaling."
Here are some verbs that can mean exactly opposite things in different contexts:
Here are some pointers to humor based on mistaken English. There is a lot of redundancy, because I selected these out of many sites found looking for the phrase "work after death", which I knew occured in one of the headline lists.
Sigh---all the pages are now gone---look at the source code for this page if you want to know where they were.
More mistaken English---mainly from translations: http://www.engrish.com/category_index.php?category=Instructions
Here are a collection of noun phrases consisting of long clusters of nouns.
Not funny to those directly involved, but here is a story about some really flagrant plagiarism: http://www.channel4.com/news/home/z/stories/20030206/dossier.html
Seen on an (unsuccessful) NSF fellowship application: "It lends one's ideas a certain credulity."
From an invitation by a sociology professor to science and engineering grad students: "create a space to explore how more reflective understandings of the social and cultural embeddedness of science, technology and engineering might enable changes to epistemological and governing practices that might engender social justice (or other desired ends)."