It's that time of year...

It's that time of year again, when I am grading my students' final papers. Grading is a chore, but the bright side is that it often yields unintentional hilarity. My students are writing papers on their experiences of going to a movie at a public cinema - they are asked to think about how things like the architecture and interior design influence audience behaviour, and also to contemplate the way people act while watching the movie.

One student went to see Red Riding Hood. The paper wasn't very good, but I was especially annoyed at the time-worn strategies she used to make me think that the paper is longer than it is - using space-consuming fonts, and unusually large margins. I want to tell her, "Honey, I've been hanging around universities for most of my life, so you're not going to trick me with your margins." Still, I'm not that annoyed, because it gave me the opportunity to write the comment "What big margins you have." See, it's Red Riding Hood, so...get it? I feel like it would be a fun challenge to come up with a pun-based comment for every paper.

Even more delightful is when students' papers contain unintentional double entendre, usually caused by a combination of bad grammar and a misplaced faith in spell-checking software. Get a load of this sentence:

"The staff itself was very friendly, in fact, one of the employers who checked my ticket was 'very good' and he hoped I enjoyed it."

I hope she enjoyed it too, "it" being a man employing a friendly staff. Where is this movie theatre, and when can I go?