Academica author biography of suzanne britt

If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you.

Groucho Marx (1890-1977; American comedian, writer, and performer: stage, radio, television and vaudeville.

He was the most famous of the Four Marx Brothers.)

One of my all-time favorite essays is Suzanne Britt’s “Neat People vs. Sloppy People.” It’s perfect when I’m exploring the structure of compare/contrast essays in my College Composition classes, especially as I explain a subject-by-subject approach.

The first half of her essay focuses on sloppy people; the second half, neat people.

But what I like far more than the essay’s rhetorical structure is Britt’s unexpected humor.

Obviously, it’s not unexpected humor for me because I have taught the essay for decades, and, for what it’s worth, the essay is as fresh and as funny today as it was when I first read it in her Show & Tell (1983).

But it is unexpected