Re: Humor in writing -- AGAIN?

["Palmer, Phyllis" <PPalmer -at- SPHERECOM -dot- COM>]

Miss Peacock,
I don't know what end of the writing biz you are in, but our SME for
hardware just encouraged me to add humor, too, and being the light
hearted one that I am, I have said SURE!!  (Now, what do I do to make it
natural and not contrived?!!).  He showed me the following book of app
notes  (great, detailed stuff with good natural humor):

"1993 Linear Applications Handbook, Vol. II, A Guide to Linear Circuit
Design", Linear Technology.

There are kids' refrigerator drawings with linear equations inserted,
and on page AN45-1 the App Note (June 1991) by Jim Williams which starts
out:  "During my wife's pregnancy I wondered what it would REALLY be
like when the baby was finally born..."  Figure 1 is the graph of baby's
fetal heart monitor.  Each Figure (drawings of electrical circuitry) is
rated by degree of difficulty with baby bottle graphics.  A three bottle
drawing was much easier than the 9 bottle drawing and infinitely simpler
than the 48 bottle drawing.  The last figure in the app note has Jim
holding new smiling baby over the oscilloscope.

It was humorous without the slapstick Lucy & Ethel-isms.  Real life and
fun, but not necessarily FUNNY.

There's my two cents worth.  I'm usually glad not to take myself too
seriously, it's just hard sometimes to get started in the right
direction.

Have fun!
Phyllis