Perhaps because of their familiarity with joke telling, students often do their best writing when using humor. In both telling jokes and creating humorous works, students need to develop a strong sense of audience, an awareness of the importance of vivid description, a strong sense of purpose, and the ability to use punctuation for effect. The humorous writing assignment not only helps students develop these skills, but also provides young writers with instant feedback. Once papers are read aloud in class, students know whether they have succeeded or not, and to what degree. After students have gained an awareness of audience, purpose, and style through the humorous writing assignment, they can apply these skills to other forms of writing. While not a panacea for all the problems of writing instruction, the use of humor is an effective and highly motivating composing strategy. (HTH)