INPUT ARTICLE: Article: To write humor effectively, you should be selective about how you use humor in your writing. Try not to have every line in a passage or a chapter be a joke. Instead, put humor in your writing with intent and purpose. Be specific so your reader is pleasantly surprised by a joke. This will ensure your humorous writing does not come off as formulaic or predictable.  For example, you may try to keep the number of jokes in your writing to one to two a page so your reader has time to enjoy the other aspects of your writing besides just the humor. You do not want to come across as a comedian to your reader, especially if you are writing fiction that is supposed to be funny but also tragic and poignant. You may also vary the types of jokes you use in your writing so the reader feels you are writing with intent and purpose. You may play with cliches in one passage, and then use humorous language in another passage so your reader is constantly surprised and amused. One way to add humor to your writing is to play around with cliches, or phrases that have become so familiar they have lost their meaning. You may take a cliche and adjust the ending of it so it is not what your reader expected. Or you may invert or twist around a cliche so it comes across as new and fresh to your reader.  For example, you may take the cliche, “Where there’s smoke…” and then adjust the ending so it is funny and strange. You may write, “Where there’s smoke, there’s our protagonist, Sandra Dee.” You could then continue to play with cliches in your story about Sandra Dee, the budding arsonist. You can also expand a cliche so it has more depth and humor to it. For example, you may take a cliche about “a mother’s life is her children” and discuss how protective you really are as a mother. You may use parallels to a mother lion in the jungle protecting her cubs and your tendency to bite at anyone who insults you or your children in any way. Comedy tends to follow the rule of three, where you set up a pattern and then misdirect readers so they are surprised and amused. The rule of three requires pairing two like ideas together and then adding a third, off the wall idea. This allows you to set up your reader with certain expectations and then throw them off with something strange and funny. For example, you may have the sentence: “Being happy is simple: Eat well, fall in love, and take happy pills when it all comes crashing down.” This sentence uses the rule of three, where you have two ideas that are entirely expected and a third idea that is not at all what one would expect. You can give your writing more personality by using language in a funny way. Embellish a story so it is funny and over the top on the page. Use language that surprises your reader so they are always kept on their toes, unsure of when the next laugh will hit. Do not be afraid to go for the big joke in your writing, as this can lead to big laughs.  You can use language to get your reader laughing by putting funny words in your writing. Many people find words that have a “k” sound to be pretty funny, from “Cadillac” to “quintuplet” as well as words that have a hard “g” sound, such as “guacamole” and “gargantuan.” You can also use language that is over the top and embellished so your reader realizes the absurdity of a situation. For example, if you are telling a story about how you almost crashed into your parent’s house, you may use describe it as, “I flew through the sleepy, suburban streets at a record breaking pace. I was way past my curfew and so worried about the pissed off look on my mother’s face when I bounded through the front door that I didn’t realize I had already arrived at my parent’s house. Headlights first into the rose garden.” You can also write a funny book by giving your characters dialogue that is funny and snappy. To do this, you can include comparison jokes in your dialogue, particularly in the dialogue of your main character or characters. Having your characters trade jokes back and forth can lead to some funny passages for your reader.  For example, you may go for the funniest metaphors you can think of. You may try to compare a feeling or a situation to the most absurd image and then put it in your character’s dialogue. You may have your character say, “I would rather floss your cat’s teeth than go out with you.” And you may have another character respond, “Great! My cat has abnormally large molars so make sure you get those while you're at it.”

SUMMARY: Use humor with intent and purpose. Play with cliches. Follow the rule of three. Use language in a humorous way. Give your characters funny dialogue.

INPUT ARTICLE: Article: Using your phone will also help you ignore almost anyone. There are a few things you can do to ignore someone with your phone. First, you can just use the phone to look busy whenever you see that person. Talk to someone else on the phone, laughing wildly, or look engrossed in an intense text-message exchange with someone you actually want to talk to.  Change your phone number so the person can't call or text you. Block that person's number from your phone so you can't receive messages from them. Set an alarm on your phone to ring when you know you're near that person, so you can pick it up and pretend to be talking to someone. Invest in some headphones, and wear them at all times when you're alone, even if you're not listening to music. When you see that person, blast your music to deafening volumes and bounce your head to the beat, so you look completely absorbed in your tunes, with absolutely no time to waste on the person you're trying to ignore. If you want to be really annoying, you can even close your eyes and sing along to the music, giving the person you're ignoring almost no chance to talk to you. Ignoring someone online is even easier than ignoring them in person because you don't have to physically avoid them. To ignore someone online, just make sure to avoid any of that person's emails, Facebook posts or messages, Twitter feeds, or any other attempts to contact you online.  Block that person from any of your social networks. Make sure he has no way of reaching out to you online. Change your email address and other usernames if you have to. That person should have no way of contacting you online.

SUMMARY:
Use your phone. Play music. Ignore someone online.