Funny Statements from Student Papers

[The Comedian]

Shall we indulge in the guilty pleasure of mockery? I think you all know what I'm talking about here: students write some unintentionally hilarious things. We tell our spouses about them. We share them with our colleagues to get a good chuckle. . . . . or, I do anyway. And maybe I'm just an insensitive barbarian.

But perhaps we could share a few here.

So far, my typo of the year is this sentence from a paper on non-verbal communication:

"One way that people communicate without words is via hand jesters".
(Ah! yes hand jesters. Those medieval finger puppets, in full costume, meant to amuse nobility. Indeed. Indeed.)

Misuse of language:

Casinos have literally jumped on the bandwagon.
(Have they now? I knew that casinos were quite capable. But jumping. . . . that's quite a feat. Do they need feet for such a feat?) :grin:

[Lokasenna]

I've done a bit of unofficial marking in my time... not had anything unintentionally hilarious, but some really barmy spelling mistakes. I remember one paper kept spelling 'solidarity' as 'sodilarity' which had me laughing... as did a fairly random reference to 'the demeese of the dinosaurs.'

[LitNetIsGreat]

Something I've noticed quite a lot is when a question asks to comment on the use of language, some students just don't get it at all. I've seen replies along the lines of "the writer has used English..."

[Lokasenna]

Something I've noticed quite a lot is when a question asks to comment on the use of language, some students just don't get it at all. I've seen replies along the lines of "the writer has used English..."

Or the "one-size-fits-all" opening gambit, which really doesn't work. I've marked several essays on, say, the depiction of death in Shakespeare, and had to endure several openings along the lines of:

"In the Renaissance, there was lots of death. As a writer of the time, Shakespeare would have been very interested in death."

It's generally at this point that I sigh and put the kettle on...

[Petrarch's Love]

Or the "one-size-fits-all" opening gambit, which really doesn't work. I've marked several essays on, say, the depiction of death in Shakespeare, and had to endure several openings along the lines of:

"In the Renaissance, there was lots of death. As a writer of the time, Shakespeare would have been very interested in death."

It's generally at this point that I sigh and put the kettle on...

Ah, the classic "love and death" paper, cousin to the "from the beginning of time" introduction. Then you get your double header: "From the beginning of time people have died. Shakespeare wrote about death in Hamlet..."

For whatever reason, I've noticed papers on the role of women in early periods tend to get generalized and flattened in this way a lot. Students will come up with a brilliant statement like "women were subjugated in Shakespeare's time" as a thesis and then proceed to list a stream of misogynistic examples in whatever Renaissance text they are addressing to produce what I think of as the "women were subjugated, let me count the ways" paper. The funniest example I ever received of this was something very close to this:

"Women in Shakespeare's time were considered weak and inferior to men. They were shown as not being strong characters. One example of this is Lady Macbeth..."

Sometimes one isn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

[The Comedian]

Ah, the classic "love and death" paper, cousin to the "from the beginning of time" introduction. Then you get your double header: "From the beginning of time people have died. Shakespeare wrote about death in Hamlet..."

A favorite of mine along this vein was a thesis that ran almost exactly like this:

"Emily Dickinson wrote about love, death, and nature." (Instructor's note: is it even possible to NOT write about one of these subjects?). And her proof ran something like this: She wrote about nature because she mentions birds a lot. And she writes about death because "death would not stop for me" and Love because in the poem "Wild Nights!" she describes someone she loves.

There you go! Proof the Emily Dickinson does indeed write about love, death, and nature.

[DanielBenoit]

Oh this thread is hilarious! Cruel, but how can you help it? Makes me feel like such a good student. Great start to my working day.

[JuniperWoolf]

I've proof-read some pretty awful lab write-ups. The funniest one was when some guy kept saying "orgasms" instead of "organisms." Another girl whose classics paper I proof-read didn't know how to use her spell check. She'd automatically click on the first word that it gave her, and she'd spell check all of the names. There were some awesomely silly things, but the only one that I can remember is that instead of saying "Menelaus," she wrote "Magnolias."

[The Comedian]

the only one that I can remember is that instead of saying "Menelaus," she wrote "Magnolias."

Ha! I love that one. And, you know it almost makes me inspired to write a poem entitled: "Menelaus Under Magnolias". . . . now what should it be about?

[LitNetIsGreat]

There are some great examples here:
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learne...ries-exams.htm

Samples:

Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.

Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.

Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah."

[Taliesin]

That site is hilarious!

Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.

The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Still reading? Have you no work to do?

etc

[MGK]

And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.

Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak

Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music.

Moses went up on Mount Cyanide (Sinai) to get the ten commandments

this site is a ****ing goldmine!

[Petrarch's Love]

What a great site, Neely.

This has got to be my all time favorite:

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet.

Though the takes on the classics aren't bad either:

Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus."

And there's just no arguing with sound logic:

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.

The account of American History is invaluable:

One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

And around election time one can't help but wonder :

Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes some of these are just priceless. I've not had time to read them all and I'm chuckling away at the ones people have quoted above, just what you need at the end of the day - some of these are so good you just couldn't invent them I mean the Shakespeare one:

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet.

Yes, that's just class.

[DanielBenoit]

I literatley fell out of my chair! This is the funniest thread on litnet

This is genius.

Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.