I was a reluctant convert to twitter, until I realised that I didn’t have to take it so seriously. Now I follow some folks for sheer entertainment, and much of my twitter activity is not strictly business.
It has occurred to me lately that twitter is improving my writing skills and helping me express myself better. When limited to 140 characters, the tendency is to resort to text speak or to use several tweets to communicate one idea. Neither solution is elegant, and neither will endear you to your followers. So every couple of days, I’m faced with the challenge of communicating a big message in a small space.
The first order of business is to decide whether it is possible to communicate the gist of the message in 140 characters. You won’t fit a book review in a tweet – certain messages are just too long to be expressed in a tweet. In these situations, write a blog post and tweet the link. Don’t be tempted to blog every little snippet – challenge yourself. Try to tell a story, describe something in detail, summarize a conversation within the confines of the allocated characters. Jot down the salient points – try to express them in a couple of sentences, and then edit them down to size. Here are a couple of other ideas to help you.
Expand your vocabulary
We’ve all heard how teenagers brains have been ruined by text speak, poor education, and mind altering drugs. Fight the decline of the English language. Use a thesaurus. A appropriately chosen word can replace a pedestrian collection of several words. Vow that any time you encounter a word you don’t know, that you’ll write it down and look it up in a dictionary later. Read a book in a genre you would usually avoid – I suggest raiding the classics.
Edit yourself mercilessly
Every superfluous LOL means 3 fewer characters available for your tweet. Strip out unnecessary adjectives and reorganise your sentences so that they are more concise. However much you might be tempted to cut back on punctuation, please don’t. A comma only costs a character, but it makes your tweets so much easier to read.
Fit it in 140 chars, then try for 125
If you’ve composed a masterpiece in 140 characters, others may retweet it, but by including the @<your twitter name>, they’ll have exceeded the 140 chars and your retweeted message will be truncated. Allow them the space to retweet, by aiming for 125 characters per tweet.
Conclusion
Fitting big ideas in small places won’t revolutionize your life, but it will sharpen your thought process, broaden your vocabulary, and help you in everyday conversation.
