Using Twitter can improve your vocabulary and communication skills like nothing else on the planet.\u00a0 When you’re burning to express something in just 140 characters, and working hard to ensure the meaning is crystal clear with no room for misinterpretation, you’re forced to think carefully and rake through all the words you’ve ever heard.\u00a0 You put more effort into avoiding ambiguous messages than for in-person conversations, since the reader has no visual cues, and you might not be asked for clarification.\u00a0 You may never find out someone jumped to the wrong conclusion. And you have no idea who might end up reading your message.\u00a0 It might be no-one, or it could be dozens, hundreds or thousands of people.<\/p>\n
Twitter is meant to be just 140 characters. Stick to it!<\/strong><\/p>\n It is possible to write longer tweets, by using ‘TwitLonger’<\/a>.\u00a0 140 characters will appear on the tweet, and the reader clicks on it to see the rest of the text – similar to clicking on a link to an article or blog post.<\/p>\n But I can’t recommend strongly enough, to NOT write tweets longer than 140 characters.<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n People are on twitter because they want short messages. If they were wanted longer messages they wouldn’t be using twitter. It’s a no-brainer. Writing longer tweets gives the impression you think your views are worth more words than others.\u00a0 Invest your own time in writing a more succinct tweet, rather than expecting readers to spend more of their time, reading your long message.<\/p>\n If the conversation includes a few people and there’s very little room to write a reply message, then it’s fine to reply in two tweets; labelling the first one 1\/2 and the second 2\/2. Take care to send the tweets in quick succession to ensure anyone who is following a lot of people, sees the tweets on their timeline together.\u00a0 It’s also wise to ensure that each of the two tweets makes sense on it’s own, as it’s common for people to RT just one of the tweets, not both.<\/p>\n But of course you don’t have to use any abbreviations if you don’t want to! Do whatever you find comfortable.<\/p>\n Most of the abbreviations I use are self-explanatory in the context they are written in, so deciphering isn’t time-consuming for readers.<\/strong><\/p>\n When abbreviating words, only shorten one or two per tweet, otherwise it’s too tedious for readers. And always make sure that the abbreviation couldn’t be misinterpreted as another word, in the context it’s written in.<\/p>\n Time-related abbreviations for Twitter:<\/strong><\/p>\n Standard country abbreviations<\/strong>, when necessary, eg Ire for Ireland.\u00a0 I use “Aus” for Australia.\u00a0 Since my messages are written in English, it should be clear it’s unlikely to mean Austria.\u00a0 Others prefer “oz”, which of course has the benefit of one less character.\u00a0 “Oz” just makes me think of Dorothy and the wizard, and visiting backpackers, however…<\/p>\n Standard measurement abbreviations<\/strong>, including:<\/p>\n Other useful keyboard symbols used on Twitter:<\/strong><\/p>\n Emoticons are combinations of keyboard symbols\/characters that turn into an image on smart phones. The best known emoticon is the colon plus brackets\u00a0 : ) which turns into a smiley face on a mobile phone, and on my blog, like this: \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n However like the lists of emoticons, they are also full of uncommonly used terms.\u00a0 Use these uncommon acronyms and abbreviations, and you’ll have readers scratching their heads.<\/p>\n As I think of them, I’ll add more abbreviations to this list that are commonly<\/em> used by agribusiness tweeters. All ears to suggestions.\u00a0 Send them to me via Twitter<\/a> or via the Contact page, below.<\/p>\n *PS: Discovered when checking text, wordpress turns keyboard characters into emoticons too, so I had to go and insert spaces to stop it, where I wanted to show the symbols that created the emoticons!\u00a0 Fortunately, computer programmes are still easily fooled.<\/p>\n Note: The majority of this blog post was written in November 2013. It has since been updated, and the above info is current as at February 2015.<\/p>\n Using Twitter can improve your vocabulary and communication skills like nothing else on the planet.\u00a0 When you’re burning to express something in just 140 characters, and working hard to ensure the meaning is crystal clear with no room for misinterpretation, you’re forced to think carefully and rake through all the words you’ve ever heard.\u00a0 You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[223],"tags":[224],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3515"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4760,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions\/4760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Abbreviating really helps create more interesting & clearer tweets, by ensuring there’s room for the vital words (messages).<\/h3>\n
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Abbreviations specific to Twitter. These always appear at the very start of the Tweet (unless in a sentence, eg “Please contact me by DM”):<\/h3>\n
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Handy acronyms, used on Twitter (and elsewhere):<\/h3>\n
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Commonly shortened words on Twitter:<\/h3>\n
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\u00a0Keyboard symbols often used on Twitter, across the top from left to right:<\/h3>\n
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Emoticons* & other combinations of keyboard symbols\/characters used to convey mood\/tone on Twitter:<\/h3>\n
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Google”Twitter Abbreviations” and you’ll find acres of lists created by others.<\/h3>\n
Summary of blog posts with tips on how to best use Twitter:<\/h3>\n
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