Guidelines on writing Humorous Captions
These Guidelines use, as an example, the use of musically related captions. However the captions can be based on anything humorous - I've included music as just one possibility.
Humorous caption-writing is a learned skill. It just takes a bit of practice.
This is not about side-splitting laughter. More about raising a smile instead of a groan.
More usefully, what follows is an outline of word-play working as a leader in a musically-themed humorous caption to a photo of a child carrying a piece of litter.
Word Play means taking glorious liberties with sound-alike words. It may involve using brackets or hyphens to allow double-meanings to emerge from the caption. The suggestion here is to begin to visualise what sort of litter might beautifully fit the caption – so they complement each other.
Word play generally can be teamed up, naturally gel, with the other ten humour devices I offer in workshopping sessions. There are many possible musically-themed captions, - examples given below. The best ones are likely to tick several boxes.
Ten humorous devices:
1 Puns
2 Mis-pronunciations, an art perfected by comedian Ronnie Barker.
3 Alliteration. As with my own 'No limits to litter' and the name of this competition.
4 Sound-alike words spelt differently. e.g. Root and route.
5 Words with double meanings.
6 Words with many meanings (The word 'set' is the winner in the English language.)
7 Reinvented familiar expressions and clichés. (Music-derived terms offer a lot)
8 Famous children's classic story references (Cinderella and her shoe from the 2016 competition.)
9 Figurative speech, metaphors and similes. (A major player in musically-themed captions)
10 Famous songs
And finally, and really important is: Contemporary relevance. It's the hallmark of a great caption.
The importance of developing associative meaning in education
The English language has been described as the richest in the world. Not only because of its overall word-count, but because of the way language is used associatively, using metaphor and simile to provide a background picture to illustrate meaning. So it is memorable, lives on in the mind. Poetry and song-lyrics do this job admirably and are the holding ground for figurative or associative language-use.
As a way to extend vocabulary, language-use, the Litter Goes Literary competition offers a fun-way to engage with the acknowledged pariah of the environmental education movement.
At a deeper level, Prince Charles in the U.K. and Berkeley University in the U.S. are champions of Integrated Thinking, joining things up. For the future well-being of ourselves and the Earth. This thinking-style has its source in brain-patterning. In encouraging children to use their brains associatively and creatively, we confirm this brain-use (more right brain-led, with a greater right brain input). Sir Ken Robinson received his knighthood for services to U.K. education. In the most watched TED talk on the internet, Sir Ken says 'for the future, creativity is more important than literacy'.
Suggestions to start the process of inventing musically themed captions.
1 Can I (w)rap this up? Photo: a wrapper and perhaps a musical prop as well.
2 Will these make a good jam session? Photo: child with a couple of jam jars found on litter-pick
3 Drumming up support.
4 Playing for time.
5 Singing in the frame (from Singing in the Rain – Photo: child litter-picking in the rain)
6 Trying to get a tune out of it / humming a different tune
7 Stop harping on about it!
8 Recorded for posterity.
9 At-tuned to the environment
10 A note to myself. / A notable find.
11 Not the right tone.
12 A sound-and-action man.
13 A matter of scale.
14 A trill-ion pieces of litter
15 Staving off apathy.
16 Trumpeting my efforts! / Trebling my efforts! / A concert-ed effort.
17 Overtones of / Undertones of
18 Getting into your repertoire
19 A rocking good time
20 Scaling things up / jazzing things up
21 In a-chord with life
22 A band of...
23 Sounding an eco-friendly note / a deeper note / a sustained note
24 Harmonising the natural elements
25 Hitting a top note
26 Busking it.
27 The sharp end of...
28A virtuoso performance
29 Conduct-ing a survey / clean-up
30 Orchestra-ting an event.
31 Key-ing into the right thing
32 Stealing a march on...
Working closely with words for the humorous caption has a knock-on effect when composing eco-lyrics to a favourite tune. Captions are the warm-up for the song. To learn, in-depth, how to write eco-songs, go to http://greenteacher.com/green-teacher-105-winter-issue/ Password 105 wsbxp
Humorous caption-writing is a learned skill. It just takes a bit of practice.
This is not about side-splitting laughter. More about raising a smile instead of a groan.
More usefully, what follows is an outline of word-play working as a leader in a musically-themed humorous caption to a photo of a child carrying a piece of litter.
Word Play means taking glorious liberties with sound-alike words. It may involve using brackets or hyphens to allow double-meanings to emerge from the caption. The suggestion here is to begin to visualise what sort of litter might beautifully fit the caption – so they complement each other.
Word play generally can be teamed up, naturally gel, with the other ten humour devices I offer in workshopping sessions. There are many possible musically-themed captions, - examples given below. The best ones are likely to tick several boxes.
Ten humorous devices:
1 Puns
2 Mis-pronunciations, an art perfected by comedian Ronnie Barker.
3 Alliteration. As with my own 'No limits to litter' and the name of this competition.
4 Sound-alike words spelt differently. e.g. Root and route.
5 Words with double meanings.
6 Words with many meanings (The word 'set' is the winner in the English language.)
7 Reinvented familiar expressions and clichés. (Music-derived terms offer a lot)
8 Famous children's classic story references (Cinderella and her shoe from the 2016 competition.)
9 Figurative speech, metaphors and similes. (A major player in musically-themed captions)
10 Famous songs
And finally, and really important is: Contemporary relevance. It's the hallmark of a great caption.
The importance of developing associative meaning in education
The English language has been described as the richest in the world. Not only because of its overall word-count, but because of the way language is used associatively, using metaphor and simile to provide a background picture to illustrate meaning. So it is memorable, lives on in the mind. Poetry and song-lyrics do this job admirably and are the holding ground for figurative or associative language-use.
As a way to extend vocabulary, language-use, the Litter Goes Literary competition offers a fun-way to engage with the acknowledged pariah of the environmental education movement.
At a deeper level, Prince Charles in the U.K. and Berkeley University in the U.S. are champions of Integrated Thinking, joining things up. For the future well-being of ourselves and the Earth. This thinking-style has its source in brain-patterning. In encouraging children to use their brains associatively and creatively, we confirm this brain-use (more right brain-led, with a greater right brain input). Sir Ken Robinson received his knighthood for services to U.K. education. In the most watched TED talk on the internet, Sir Ken says 'for the future, creativity is more important than literacy'.
Suggestions to start the process of inventing musically themed captions.
1 Can I (w)rap this up? Photo: a wrapper and perhaps a musical prop as well.
2 Will these make a good jam session? Photo: child with a couple of jam jars found on litter-pick
3 Drumming up support.
4 Playing for time.
5 Singing in the frame (from Singing in the Rain – Photo: child litter-picking in the rain)
6 Trying to get a tune out of it / humming a different tune
7 Stop harping on about it!
8 Recorded for posterity.
9 At-tuned to the environment
10 A note to myself. / A notable find.
11 Not the right tone.
12 A sound-and-action man.
13 A matter of scale.
14 A trill-ion pieces of litter
15 Staving off apathy.
16 Trumpeting my efforts! / Trebling my efforts! / A concert-ed effort.
17 Overtones of / Undertones of
18 Getting into your repertoire
19 A rocking good time
20 Scaling things up / jazzing things up
21 In a-chord with life
22 A band of...
23 Sounding an eco-friendly note / a deeper note / a sustained note
24 Harmonising the natural elements
25 Hitting a top note
26 Busking it.
27 The sharp end of...
28A virtuoso performance
29 Conduct-ing a survey / clean-up
30 Orchestra-ting an event.
31 Key-ing into the right thing
32 Stealing a march on...
Working closely with words for the humorous caption has a knock-on effect when composing eco-lyrics to a favourite tune. Captions are the warm-up for the song. To learn, in-depth, how to write eco-songs, go to http://greenteacher.com/green-teacher-105-winter-issue/ Password 105 wsbxp
