I advise my children to leave unremarked any puns they may make. The mystery of intention can only increase the fun.
>grain<
I have used that phrase a few times when a statement might possibly be interpreted as an attempt at humor and I just want to make it clear that, despite appearances, it is unintended.
As to the question of couldn’t it just be rewritten to avoid the pun…well, I imagine there is no one answer to that question but in general, if you are a professional writer, I would agree.
> bluish <
I often say it even if there is no possible pun in my preceding sentence. It keeps people on their toes.
Sent from my LG-V410 using Tapatalk
And sometimes, to ward off the inevitable “I see what you did there”. 
or, if the situation in question is serious in nature, being seen as the sort of jackass who makes “going down” jokes when talking about a some poor victim of an elevator mishap or something along those lines.
I am reminded of the girl who made the mistake of using the term “call a spade a spade” in a discussion that, and I don’t remember the specifics, may have had some sort of race related topic. And yeah, the kneejerk reaction of many was to ignorantly spit “THATS RACIST!” rather than educate themselves on just what that term means and where and when it originated. I suppose she should have either not used that term or qualified it with the dreaded " No pun intended" but then again, people could just not be ignorant but, well, yeah, that is not going to happen.
I go with Chronos. When I’ve used it, it means I didn’t originally intend the pun, but saw it later and thought it worked, so I kept it.
I also often find rewording things to be difficult. More often then not, I really change the meaning, and have to change a lot. Like, for instance this paragraph, which originally started “I also am not a big fan of rewording things.” But I decided to say something different.