Ninety years ago a couple of Yale law school professors used to ride the New Haven Railroad to New York City. In the restrooms was a sign that said, “Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilet while the train is standing still or passing through a station.”
The two professors thought the sign verbose and pompous, so they got other passengers to sing the sign to the tune of Humoresque. It went like this:
(sings) Passengers will please refrain From flushing toilet while the train Is standing still Or passing through a station.
Soon the New Haven Railroad, ridiculed, changed the sign to read “Don’t flush toilet when train is stopped.”
If you’re bored you might try this sort of thing. All you need is some turgid prose and a well-known song to recast it in. Here’s a passage from a corporate memo. It’s written as though the words are walking around on stilts.
We can appreciate the view that our alert may not have provided enough context to explain the scientific points we aimed to address, and so have removed it from our site.
To the tune of “The Red River Valley” this can easily become the following:
(sings) Since we didn’t provide enough context, And we want to promote good science, We’ve removed our alert from our website And we humbly seek your compliance.
Remember: only you can protest pretentious prose.
I’m Tom McBride, and that’s my Perspective.
