One of the things that I’ve always liked about Twitter is how it forces me to be concise when I write. I find that when I write blog posts, I’m often looking for ways to make things longer so I can justify it as a whole, you know, post. Which is ridiculous.
Today Copyblogger points out that for those of us who have—ah—loose prose, Twitter can be an excellent training tool:
Since you only have 140 characters to get your message across, you’re forced to dust off your dictionary and thesaurus and find new words to use—Words that are shorter, words that are more descriptive, and words that get the job done in 140 characters or less.
Crafting a message for Twitter requires you to “pump up” your verbs (replacing adverbs and adjectives with them), and discover a better, clearer and more concise way to say what you want to say.
I usually tweet using my college journalism professor’s SLBMBT (Something Like But Much Better Than) method. I drop in the message that I’m trying to say, in big long ugly phrase, and then I shave it down to the proper 140 character limit.
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thanks for the trackback! i’m glad you enjoyed the post!
of course!