I wrote a post on how Blogs and Wikis make students better writers–teachers too for that matter–and wanted to follow it up with how tweeting improves writing. Then I found Jennifer’s summary. It pretty well covers what I’d say:
- You learn to be concise
- You learn to be focused
- You have time to check for grammar and spelling
- Writing short messages helps you perfect the art of “headlining”
- Just 140 characters per message builds discipline. You can’t ramble
- Your message is seen by tweeple that expect brief, bright, pithy, pointed tweets
- You quickly learn that PhD words are great for Scrabble but horrible for Twitter and its reading world
- It often only takes a few words to make our point
- Tweets need to be written knowing that tweeple can @reply
- Your messages may be part of a larger theme via #hashtags
If you’re in a hurry and want a quick version, here’s the concise, pithy version by Jennifer:
How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer
By now you’ve most likely joined Twitter (and if you haven’t, you need to, pronto!). Twitter is not only a great place for businesses and marketers, but it’s also a great place to spruce up your writing skills.
Yes. You read that correctly.
Twitter can make you a better writer. Here’s how.
Twitter forces you to be concise
If you’ve ever used Twitter, you know that you have 140 characters to say whatever you want to say. Now keep in mind, I didn’t say 140 words—or even 140 letters—I said 140 characters.
That’s not a lot of room. Letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation and spaces all count as characters on Twitter.
What all of this means is, you have to be concise. You have to know exactly what you want to say, and say it in as few words as possible.
Many writers, however, are “wordy” and often have long, drawn out descriptions and sentences, so it can be pretty difficult to create a message that’s only 140 characters.
Here’s where Twitter comes in again.
Twitter forces you to exercise your vocabulary
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.
Now most people won’t hit 140 characters right away. No, they’ll end up with 160 or 148 characters to start out with (Twitter tells you how many characters you need to remove to make your message fit).
This is the final way that Twitter makes you a better writer.
Twitter forces you to improve your editing skills
Every writer needs to be able to edit their work. And by using Twitter, you can really hone your editing skills and make them top-notch.
It’s almost like playing a game; trying to write a 140-character message and still get your point across in a way that inspires your followers to take action, to click on your link or to “retweet” your post.
I like to think of it as a brainteaser, forcing me to think hard and dig deep down into my vocabulary to find a way to shorten my message.
I’ve been using Twitter since January, and my writing skills have not only improved, but I’ve been writing better copy as well.
Yet another reason you should be using Twitter. Not that you needed one.
–from 55 Technology Projects for the Digital Classroom. Preview available on Amazon.com and Scribd.com
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Excellent points on Twitter and student writing … I’ve been using Twitter for a couple of months or so, and I agree. I find I’m enjoying the discipline attached to each of those items you enumerated.
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I just checked your twitter. Good ideas. I love tech because it gives kids so many avenues to succeed–like audio stories
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what a great post thanks for sharing
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Glad you enjoyed it.
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brevity good
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as well as a sense of humor!
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Well, I’ve always thought writing on Twitter is like writing poetry. Each line is like a verse.
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Nicely said.
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This post makes me want to step up my Twitter game.
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I usually don’t post on Blogs but ya forced me to, great info.. excellent! … I’ll add a backlink and bookmark your site.
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Thanks, Tnelson. I’m a big Twitter fan.
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By far the most concise and up to date information I found on this topic. Sure glad that I navigated to your page by accident. I’ll be subscribing to your feed so that I can get the latest updates. Appreciate all the information here
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I agree. Quick precise points are great. Most people only skim read anyways. I love the conversational often first personal tone people write tweets and blogs.. Some of them anyways. No more big words, long drawn out 3 rd person accounts. Now I find magazine articles annoying because they are too detailed and don’t get to the point.
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That short attention span could be a bad thing, but twitter morphs it to an advantage–squeezing every bit of meaning into as short a time as possible. Works for my busy days.
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Hum! No doubt; you r right but wit the conciseness of letters -i think d@s not new cause such feature has already existed with mobile sms.
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That’s true, Martin, but Twitter is more visible to groups. It’s a good way for students to share with a community (in a safe way, of course).
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You should take part in a contest for one of the best sites on the web. I’m going to highly recommend this web site!
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Thanks! I try…
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