Hilarious even when unconscious, Jonathan Caws-Elwitt suggests that someone ought to write a book called:

From Scare Quotes to Air Quotes: Framing and Shaming Dubious Micro-Texts

From literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:

Entomologically speaking, there are antennae on an ant. But etymologically speaking, there is no ant in antennae.

He sent a telegram to a croquet game that the canary is getting dissatisfied and that the cat has left.  From The Judge, 1913.  Cue the song "My Canary Plays Canasta in Canarsie" by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.

Thanks to dashing* humorist playwright Jonathan Caws-Elwitt for spotting our How to Be Your Own Cat and A Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound at Quimby's Bookstore in Brooklyn.

*Jonathan is stylish, adventurous, and occasionally uses dashes** in his writing.

**He doesn't shy from going the full em dash, and he knows how to finesse an en dash when necessary.  He's no stranger to a non-breaking hypen (and that's not a minus).  We're confident that he could handle a horizontal bar (even if it had to be swung).

Words actually used in Fred Flintsone's vocabulary.  From The Boston Edge, 1986, via Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.

From the literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:

Chaos is inchoate, but it's so inchoate that its "c-h-a-o" has no etymological relationship to the other word's "c-h-o-a."

This Venn diagram, courtesy of literary scalawag and connoisseur of 60s movies Jonathan Caws-Elwitt, interprets an obsolete classification system once used to pigeonhole the bachelors of yore.

Courtesy of literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:

"But are you sure the magician vanished in a cloud of smoke?"

"Yes, we have POOF! positive."

Courtesy of literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:

Now, isn't that just the cutest little doggie!

A. Yes.

B. No.

C. Objection! Counsel is leading the witness.

D. Do you really want an honest answer to that?

E. Now? Yes. But if a cuter little doggie comes along in a minute or two, you're out of luck.

You've seen the comic panel in which a receptionist tells her boss, "I've got New York on the line," as a silhouette of the state of New York patiently holds a phone receiver.  Here's a precursor to that, with Siberia making … ahem … a cold call.  From English Illustrated, 1894.

"Love's 'ALPHABET' you know so well, that over me you've cast your 'SPELL.'"  It's a precursor to Jonathan Caws-Elwitt's recording of "One-Letter Words."

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt suggests that someone should write "a concordance to offstage characters in literature.  By this I do not mean a trivial voice that speaks from the wings in a drama or calls on the telephone in a novel, but rather personae who are given some extensive discussion by a narrator or other characters but who never, ever appear directly."

Q: "Why there are so many songs about rainbows?" —the song Rainbow Connection

A: There aren't. —literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

Courtesy of literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt: