“President Vows to Cut Taxes Hair”:Dataset and Analysis of Creative Text Editing for Humorous Headlines
Table 3: Edited headlines were judged funnier when they had a larger proportion of replaceable words.
['Repl. Words Prop.', '0.2', '0.4', '0.6', '0.8', '1.0']
We can also examine the number and proportion of replaceable words and how these numbers affect funniness. In our dataset, the number of replaceable words ranged between 1 and 12, and funniness grades of micro-edits were significantly lower at the two extremes. Editors apparently had difficulty generating humor when they were severely constrained in choosing a word to replace, or when they had too many choices for replacement. This suggests that allowing editors more freedom in choosing words from the headline to edit results in better humor, or that high proportion of nouns, entities and verbs in the headline increases the chance of successful humor generation.