Q. My company publishes a monthly employee newsletter. My boss asked me to write a funny quiz. I'm not exactly a stand-up comic. Help!
A. Ah, the funny quiz. Lucky you! It's not often that a company has an official sense of humor that they are willing to display for all to read. This is going to be a great assignment for you!
A funny quiz is typically one where the questions and answers have no real purpose other than to make the quiz taker laugh. Although almost anything goes, there are some taboo subjects. Offhand I'd say that anything that pokes fun at a specific person, or groups of people, as well as anything that's anti-Semitic, racial, sexual, political, or religious should be off limits. Remember, what one person thinks is funny can offend someone else. Even seemingly innocuous subjects like "hillbilly" or "redneck" jokes might not be funny to someone who lives in the mountains or the Deep South (like I do).
You can think of a funny quiz as a series of one-liners with multiple-choice punch lines. Because you are writing for a company publication you have a built-in "affinity group" as there is bound to be some common subjects that are company related and could be made into something funny.
