Sentence Starters

In the middle school English classes at our school, our students are encouraged to use a variety of sentence starters to make their writing assignments more interesting. This is not a novel (tee-hee) concept, as I noticed over on Carol's blog.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2006 Results from San Jose State University have been announced. Each year since 1982, the school has parodied the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton who penned the immortal words so beloved by Snoopy--"It was a dark and stormy night." The contest accepts entries for the bad opening sentences of fictional novels. There a multitude of categories, and I think my favorite by far is Vile Puns. Of course, it helps that the runner-up's entry appeals to my mathematical nature:

Herr Professor Doktor Weiss' reputation was made when he conclusively proved the fraudulency of the Mayan codex that claimed to show that that ancient people knew the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter to an exactitude unknown until modern times, in his article, "Bye, Bye, Mesoamerican Pi."

John L. Drost
Barboursville, WV

Not only does it include references to geometry, it highlights a great American song. I think I'll be humming all day now.

Be sure to stop by the web site to read some more!