Question #736 Term Paper

posted September 30th by Joe

Some recent facebooking has reminded me of the old format of term paper titles:

<paper_title> ::= <title>“:”<subtitle>

<title> ::= something_attention_getting

<subtitle> ::= descriptive_statement

For example: “You Threw My What Out the Window?!: An Economic Analysis of the Transaction Described by Pato Banton in the Song ‘Don’t Sniff Coke.’“

My question for you: If you could write any term paper you wanted, what would the title be?

Bonus: Give us a sample of the contents.

veryserious.org is not a secret, share this (on facebook) or
category: a very serious question

→ 8 answers so far ↓

  • 1 phil // Sep 30, 2009 at 9:24 am

    Also usually ::= bad pun

    So for example “Colon Cancer: An Analysis of Punctuation in Research Papers” would work (Not made up by me by the way).

    Sometimes the name will also be like “Copenhagen 1919: Renewal, Rebirth, Repeat?”

    current votes: 0 if this makes you say “I approve of this”

  • 2 phil // Sep 30, 2009 at 9:24 am

    I’m so glad I never finished grad school.

    current votes: 0 if this makes you say “props”

  • 3 Nick // Sep 30, 2009 at 11:33 am

    “I’m Sorry I Stabbed You & Stole Your Ring:
    The Immersive Effects of Dungeons & Dragons”

    current votes: 0 if this makes you say “I approve of this”

  • 4 jon // Sep 30, 2009 at 11:46 am

    “Overdrawn!: An Examination of My Ability to Buy Groceries After Virginia Tech Upsets Miami”

    current votes: 0 if this makes you say “unnggghhhh!”

  • 5 Joe // Oct 1, 2009 at 6:06 am

    Haw! I want to read both of those papers.

    I have another music related one:

    “Ram It Down: Exploring the lyrics of Judas Priest for coded hints about Rob Halford’s sexuality.”

    current votes: 0 if this makes you say “I approve of this”

  • 6 Joe // Oct 1, 2009 at 6:46 am

    The point of the paper would be if you looked extremely closely at some of those JP lyrics you can see some cleverly-disguised hints that Rob might have been gay.

    current votes: 0 if this makes you say “unnggghhhh!”

  • 7 phil // Oct 1, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    What more could he have done to try to get his point across? If he would have made a song called “I, Rob Halford, am gay” people still wouldn’t have gotten his point.

    current votes: 0 if this makes you say “hooray!”

  • 8 Tiffany! // Oct 1, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    I wrote a ton of papers last year, mostly ones I enjoyed.
    The title of one where I compared Sarah Orne Jewett’s writing to John Lennon’s was called
    I am the Heron, Goo Goo G’Joob

    It was of course aimed at the reader, Professor Hanley, a lover of literature and music, who gave it a big fat A.

    current votes: 0 if this makes you say “I approve of this”

You must log in to comment. I tried it the other way and had to erase 1,000 ads for viagra and mortgages one by one. Register here, it takes less than ten seconds.