Punch Line

The term punch line refers to an important part of the joke, often following the joke setup, that produces an unexpected twist in the narrative, resulting in humor. It is possible, in a one-liner, for the punch line to constitute the whole joke, in which case the setup is implied. The punch line is typically the very last part of a joke, but in rare cases, parts of the setup follow it.

A punch line can be looked at as the highest point of tension toward the end of the joke. Once such an assumption is made, a joke can be looked at in terms of “pulses,” in Robert Hetzron’s terminology, and the punch lines can be described in terms of the pulses or episodes of the joke, as stated by Salvatore Attardo. A straight-line, one-pulse joke would linearly build up the expectation of something and then drop such expectation at the very end, which is where the punch line lies.

Jokes can also contain two pulses, with two corresponding punch lines. An example of such a joke is the “good news–bad news” type, where two characteristics of the same event contrast each other, yet each of them is funny. The following joke adds a macabre twist:

The latter joke, besides the two obvious pulses, both funny (the first one is so because such a phone call cannot be for real: A terminal patient is given months or even years to live, never 24 hours), is also a play on the usual good news–bad news joke. Robert Hetzron describes a somewhat less frequent subtype with two pulses:

The joke has a punch line (the first pulse) and a commentary afterward (the second pulse) that turns out to be funnier than the punch line. According to Attardo, longer texts can be described in similar terms, and the separate funny utterances would be referred to as “jab lines.”

There are other jokes where a punch line is the last answer to a repeating question and, thus, it could be viewed as occurring in parts throughout the text. A typical example of such jokes is any joke involving three characters. The repetition of the question and various answers contribute to the funniness of the last one given. It is possible, of course, for the answers to the questions to be funny in their own right, such as in the following

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