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Humor in newspapers and magazines goes far beyond straightforward jokes such as this. In fact, some of the funniest items in print were not intended that way.

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Often the humor results from unintended double entendres. If “condemned” in the headline below is read as a noun, it refers to all people condemned to death in Utah. If it is read as a passive verb, it would seem to refer to all the people in Utah.

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Some of the most hilarious humor results from the juxtaposition of different news events. In the case below, President Ronald Reagan’s visit to a school unfortunately was published alongside an unrelated story about child molesters.

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Similarly, this woman pictured with her prize piglet has nothing to do with the story about sexual misconduct at city hall.

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Say what? Just who is doing the trampling, crowds or the Pope? A change in word order could have avoided this absurdity.

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Likewise if you reverse the order of the two lines above, the absurdity of 18 years in a checkout line would be eliminated.

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And who’s the foolish person, the Garden Grove resident or the judge?

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Lake Henshaw offers opportunity “to” goose hunters or “for” goose hunters?

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And then there is the humor most readers never get to see. A book titled The Best of the Rejection Collection 10 years ago published 293 cartoons The New Yorker had rejected, many of them from regular contributors. For example:

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The Best of the Rejection Collection consists of cartoons that “were too dumb, too dark, or too naughty for The New Yorker.”