History Main / WritingLines

** In the 1956 young-adult novel ''Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint'' by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams, Danny's teacher, in an effort to get him to stop daydreaming about space travel, makes him write "Space flight is a hundred years away" over and over. Before he can begin the assignment, the spaceship his friend Professor Bullfinch has secretly invented is accidentally lauched, with Danny and friends aboard. They make it back to Earth and Danny presents the assignment to his teacher, having finished it during the voyage. She humbly says she'll keep it as a souvenir.

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* Monty Python's ''LifeOfBrian'' features a scene where Brian is caught by a Roman centurion while he's writing "Romans go home!" on the wall of the amphitheatre. The centurion couldn't care less what the actual message is, he's just pissed at Brian's poor Latin grammar and promptly delivers a Latin lesson. Brian is then told to write the message in proper Latin 100 times on the wall before sunrise.
** He completes it barely in time, with a worn-out brush and empty paint tin. The guards that have stayed behind to be sure that Brian completes his task then leave, and the second they disappear behind the corner, another Roman patrol shows up - and these guards actually notice what he has written, whereupon the chase begins...
* HighOctaneNightmareFuel version in ''TheShining'': "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", formatted like it was actual text for extra creepiness points.

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* Italian ComedicSociopathy series CameraCafe has [[TooDumbToLive Paolo]] ending up this way because he screwed with [[TheUnfairSex the girls in the office]].The result is this trope, but on a paper sheet lying on the floor. An enormous one, at that. It covers [[BeyondTheImpossible the whole corridor]].
* In ''{{Warehouse 13}}'', Artie makes Claudia fill a blackboard with "I will not disobey Artie" after she almost destroys the Warehouse by using a magnetic coat [[ItMakesSenseInContext to change a lightbulb]].
* In one episode of ''SoWeird'', Annie and Jack get trapped in a magical version of detention by an artifact until they can learn to get along with each other. One of the assignments is to fill a blackboard with lines. A blackboard that [[BeyondTheImpossible covers every inch of the courtroom.]] They're understandably sore after it's over.

* In GordonKorman's book ''The War With Mr. Wizzle'', the new PointyHairedBoss of an assistant principal introduces lines as a standardized universal punishment. The students retaliate by picking a handful to write everybody's lines for them, giving the other students time to sabotage Wizzle's computer, invent TheEarnest, and so on. (The kids who get picked to do lines soon begin to resent the ones who got assigned to the fun stuff, but they prevail anyway.) By contrast, the Headmaster, Mr. Sturgeon, whose power the students respect, disapproves of lines and prefers to impose lengthy essays as punishment.

* NightmareFuel version in ''TheShining'': "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", formatted like it was actual text for extra creepiness points.

* Cadets at the United States MilitaryAcademy perform a variation of the trope when they get in trouble. Instead of writing lines, they march back and forth in a courtyard on the campus. Presumably part of the deal is they have to maintain proper marching form while doing so, which can be ''exhausting''.

* [[http://www.lab6.com/old/school/yearbook/lynz.html Adam Clarkson]] was told to write a hundred lines, and if he didn't finish by the end of the day, they'd double. After over half a year, at which point it was 10^19 lines, they were told that if they don't finish them that day, they'd start squaring. That was in 1998. It's now much, much more than a googolplex.

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* The pilot episode of ''InvaderZim'' has the creepy teacher ordering Dib to write that Zim is not an alien.

* ''HarryPotter''
** The infamous detentions with [[Characters/HarryPotter Professor Umbridge]] in ''Order of the Phoenix''. Harry is forced to write with a quill that doesn't use ink, but as you write, the words are etched onto your hand, and the writing appears on the paper in your own blood. He still has the "I must not tell lies" scar in the last two books. And the wound proper doesn't appear at first time. For Harry to recieve the scars, he had to write the line several times, every night of the week, on several occasions.

** The infamous detentions with [[Characters/HarryPotter Professor Umbridge]] in ''Order of the Phoenix''. Harry is forced to write with a quill that doesn't use ink, but as you write, the words are etched onto your hand, and the writing appears on the paper in your own blood. He still has the "I must not tell lies" scar in the last two books. And the proper wound won't appear at first time, for Harry to recieve the scars, he had to write the line several times for every night of the week, on several occasions.

** In "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie", Mrs. Krabappel makes Marge write "I will try to raise a better child".

** The infamous detentions with [[Characters/HarryPotter Professor Umbridge]] in ''Order of the Phoenix''. Harry is forced to write on to his hand with a pen that magically burns the words into his flesh.

** At one point, Bart writes "Does any kid still do this anymore?" as a reference to the increasing rarity of these as the show progresses, as well as becoming a DiscreditedTrope in general.

* NightmareFuel version in ''TheShining'': "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", formatted like it was actual text for extra creepiness points.

* Happens constantly to Jason in ''FoxTrot''. He tried to automate it with a C+ programming script twice; once by printing out the lines with the computer to tape it to the blackboard, and once by writing the script directly in chalk. Miss O'Malley didn't accept either attempt.

* ''HarryPotter'' has the infamous detentions with [[TheUmbridge Professor Umbridge]] in ''Order of the Phoenix'', in which the student writes them in his own blood. (More benignly and amusingly, one of Harry's classmates is set the lines "I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick" after screwing up a spell.)
** Umbridge, being the CompleteMonster that she is, doesn't seem to care about the effects of blood loss in the students she's punishing, since it's implied that her detentions (or Harry's, at least) start at around 5 in the evening and go until past midnight.
*** It could be that the tip is not as sharp as perhaps expected, as it's stated that the first (and perhaps even the second night) merely irritate the skin to a deep shade of red and don't start bleeding unless the detention is continued.

* Italian ComedicSociopathy series CameraCafe has [[TooDumbToLive Paolo]] ending up this way because he screwed with [[TheUnfairSex the girls in the office]].The result is this trope, but on a paper sheet lying on the floor. An enormous one, at that. It covers [[RefugeInAudacity the whole corridor]].

[[TheSimpsons http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cutcorners.jpg]]

** He completes it barely in time, with a worn-out brush and empty paint tin, and only then do the bored guards actually notice what he has written, whereupon the chase begins...

* Happens constantly to Jason in ''FoxTrot''. He tried to automate it with a C+ programming script twice; once by printing out the lines with the computer to tape it to the blackboard, and once by writing the script directly in chalk. Miss O'Malley doesn't accept either attempt.

* Happens constantly to Jason in ''FoxTrot''. He once tries to automate it with a script. Teacher doesn't accept it.