Can Twitter improve your writing?
Writing brief messages in 140 characters or less doesn’t seem like much, yet Twitter has built a social networking empire doing just that. I came to Twitter fairly late in the game, after much persuading by some other social-saavy friends/family. The more I use Twitter, the more I wonder: Is this improving my writing?
The most obvious answer, and the one I agree with, is yes, Twitter can improve your writing. You are forced to use words selectively and make you 140 character messages as concise as possible. A lot of writers have a problem of being too wordy. It’s a hard habit to break and writers don’t see it in their own work. They only notice their wordiness when someone points it out to them in a draft.
With Twitter, there is no room to be wordy. For example, I’ll think of some great idea I want to tweet about, only to be disappointed that when written out, it goes way over the 140 character limit. So I find myself cutting out words, using shorter words, getting rid of unnecessary punctuation and so forth. It can be a lot of work to get a tweet just right.
When I did a quick Google search on this subject, I came across this post from Copyblogger. In part, the post says:
Since you only have 140 characters to get your message across, you
Related Posts
- Neil Gaiman writing short story on Twitter – with a big twist!
- I have finally joined Twitter
- Twitter your way to novelist stardom!
- 5 tips to organize your writing
- Why writing fiction can be so complex
Read More: Writing
