Happy Thanksgiving from the Leff team!

We here at Leff Communications believe family time is important. It’s also entirely possible that, after the initial catch-up over the first two helpings of Thanksgiving food, you may start to cast around for conversation topics with your distant cousins.

We have your back. Or, rather, I have your back, because I didn’t officially sanction this post with Management before posting it. That’s right. This is your rogue Thanksgiving conversation prep post.

“Weird Al” Yankovic and I have a strained relationship. I like what he does with wordplay and riffing off pop songs, but he is purposefully obnoxious and that sort of humor is not really my style. (The high musical standards of my Leff comrades–Scott is a bonafide pro musician, and when we recently bought a turntable for the office everyone but me had an extensive vinyl album collection to contribute to the rotation–was another reason I did not seek permission before going rogue on the blog.)

However, Al hit a home run with one of his most recent offerings: a wordplay-heavy ditty based on Robin Thicke’s distasteful (not to mention plagiarized) “Blurred Lines.” It’s called “Word Crimes.” I admit: the wordsmith in me swooned.

I mean, the man rhymed “nomenclature” (with, what else, “educate ya”). That in itself earns respect. And there are pieces of this video I would have loved to show my English 101 class when I was teaching community college.

So, loyal readers, this is your chance. Regale your relations with witty quips about grammar and usage. Keep the mystery alive by refusing to show them the silly video with dancing punctuation marks.

Have a happy holiday!

P.S. Management did actually see this post because they run a tight ship. In fact, Managing Partner Heather Ploog is the one who sent me this video in the first place. We are an office of grammar nerds and quite proud of it.

Brittany Williams

Brittany is the editorial director at Leff. She is passionate about helping clients tell their stories through incisive, fact-based narratives. Every once in awhile, she takes a break to muse on rhetorical devices, grammar, and content strategy on the Leff Communications blog. Follow Brittany on Twitter @britpetersen.

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