One liners consist of puns, miss interpretations of common situations, subversion of well know phrases and are often concerned with nothing more than the construction of language.

The one-liners that seem to get the best reception are those that condense information into concise sentences. This is partly to do with timing and partly to do with the audiences ability to quickly fill in information when the topic contains such common knowledge.

For example, Tim Vine’s joke ‘I was playing Football on a plane, so I ran up the wing.’ is so concise because the subject matter is so broad, everyone knows that panes have wings, and that the sides of the football pitch are also called wings. It’s simple but so effective because it utilizes a function of comedy that has been a part of humor since forever, the smiple fact that some words have two meanings.