For June 24-30, 2026

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. After our bitter disappointments at the Olympics and the Academy Awards earlier in the year, we finally caught a break and got some good news this week: There IS a World Cup of Short Humor Newsletters and we WERE invited to compete as Team USA! Bad news: We immediately got knocked out by a surprisingly scrappy German short humor newsletter duo. Congrats to Johann and Maxim. What can we say? They just wanted it more.

What We Enjoyed This Week

The Seven Meanings of “Fine,” in Descending Order of Plausible Deniability by Oskar Milton (McSweeney’s) A delightful exploration of the nuances of language, and all the different ways one single, short word can be used. There are a lot of great details and specifics in this piece: “This fine terminates. It does not summarize. It does not resolve. It just stops—a door closed with exactly enough force to indicate the door is closed. The subject is fine. The matter is fine. The matter will remain fine until 11:14 p.m. that night, when it will become eight separate matters, each with its own deadline.” Yes, this piece is fine. (Meaning #1.)

Wirecutter Headlines During the Revolutionary War by JiJi Lee (McSweeney’s) JiJi totally nails the tropes and vocabulary of Wirecutter headlines. (“We Found the Holy Grail of _____.”) Taking these clichés and juxtaposing them with Revolutionary War specifics is a terrific recipe for laughs: “You’re Quartering a British Soldier. These Decorative Screens Will Help Maintain Your Privacy”"

A Short Defense of Sports Clichés by Isabella Cacdac Ampil (The Paris Review) And speaking of clichés, sports clichés have long been the subject of all kinds of comedy. (See, for example: Post-Dinner Interview with a Twelve-Year-Old Who Sat at the Grown-Ups’ Table for the First Time on Thanksgiving.) This piece does have some funny descriptions of sports clichés being deployed in the wild, but it’s also a compelling argument with an interesting take on the limits of language that will make you see those clichés in a new light. In other words: Isabella took it one sentence at a time, left it all on the desk, and at the end of the day gave 110% when writing this article.

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An Old Favorite

An Announcement by Mark Singer (The New Yorker) Mark Singer, the great New Yorker writer, passed away last Friday. You probably know him best for his journalism and profiles (including two classics on Ricky Jay and… Donald Trump), but he also wrote short humor as well. To honor him, we thought it would be appropriate to share this Shout, in which he imagines announcing his retirement. In this very funny, delightfully self-deprecating piece, he projects that his retirement will take place in 2015, and we feel very lucky we got another decade+ of writing from him beyond what he imagined.

Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter.

Updates From Your Editors and Friends of the Newsletter

There’s still time to sign up for Luke’s short humor workshops starting next week! He’s got advanced workshops starting on Thursday afternoon (2 spots left) and Friday afternoon (1 spot left), and an intro class starting Thursday night (2 spots left).