Which is worse, when someone says “pun not intended” or “pun intended”?
When someone throws out the pun unintended, they are telling you that the previous statement wasn’t for joke reasons. But regardless of that, you go back and reread the statement to see what the pun that the writer had unintended. In my opinion, half of the time the writer throws out the “pun not intended” line despite the fact that he or she really did intend the pun. The writer throws in this line in to draw your attention to the pun (which came off so cleverly in their mind) but still act like they didn’t go the cheap humor route. The writer recognizes that the pun is quite possibly the worst joke form ever (really, it’s about 50% of the reason Star Wars Episode 1 and Episode 2 were terrible) but they can’t control their urge to throw in the awful joke. Then they wipe away any fault by saying it was not intended.
On the other side of the coin, the writer using the “pun intended” line is just as bad. They went through the same progress of thinking up a pun. Then instead of abandoning responsibilty for the pun, they go completely off the other end. In this case, they are accepting full blame/credit for the pun, but in addition they are throwing in an additional bad joke by commenting on the people who use “pun not intended.”
Based on all of this, I would probably go with the writers who use “pun intended” (even though my opening question was supposed to be rhetorical).
Really, the only solution to the pun situation would be to not make note of it in anyway. The reader doesn’t care whether it was intended or not, and sometimes they won’t even notice it is a pun. So, put the pun in and just leave it to the reader to figure things out… or better yet, figure out a way to not use puns.
-This rant brought to you be LZ Granderson of ESPN’s Page 2 from the article about Martina Hingis’ career’s eulogy.
December 27, 2007 at 3:25 pm |
Don’t even link us to the source or anything; we’ll figure it out on our own.
January 5, 2008 at 9:10 am |
It depends on if the pun is written or not. Someone could be speaking off the top of their head, say a pun without realizing it, and then backtrack once the realization sets in with a “no pun intended.”
However, in writing, you have time to reflect on what you want, spell check it and whatnot. Unless it’s instant messenger or something, it’s intended – after all, in the time it takes to write “no pun intended,” you could have changed the actual pun.
“Pun intended” is silly… One doesn’t say “Hi there, friend! Greeting intended! What’s up? Question asked!”
Yup, the best way is to let the pun be and not make mention of it.