Twitter English
Every drop needs squeezing from 140 chars. Let me show you how that’s done. Here are four tweets - all of which can be improved - from four Twitterers I follow: Jeremy Keith, Aegir Hallmundur, Simon Warrick & Jenny Rolfe. These four were in a block and I chose them at random to show that any tweet can be improved:
- JK: Estimating the geek to civilian ratio in this pub to be about 2:1 right now.
- AH: Ooo, much criticism of the BBC in #thebubble. They’re only getting one series then…
- SW: Since when did celebrity gossip and apologies for their behaviour become the most important news item on the BBC? Tiger Woods is not news!
- JR: hmmm. just super glued a paint brush to my tights. think that means it’s time to stop making stuff today.
Let’s start with Jeremy’s:
- Estimating the geek to civilian ratio in this pub to be about 2:1 right now.
‘Estimating’ and ‘about’ have the same meaning, so we can lose ‘Estimating’. We understand the convention and the humour of ‘geek to civilian ratio’ so that should stay. ‘in this’ can be shortened to ‘in the’ without losing meaning, because the reader is safe to assume that Jeremy is not talking about a pub he is not in. And as we lost ‘Estimating’, ‘to be’ needs changing to ‘is’ to make grammatical sense. Finally ‘right now’ is redundant because all tweets are posted in the moment. The final full stop is unnecesary too; tweets are so short they can be treated like headlines. So we end up with:
- The geek to civilian ratio in the pub is about 2:1
Which says the same, with less chars and greater clarity.
Now let’s look at Aegir’s:
- Ooo, much criticism of the BBC in #thebubble. They’re only getting one series then…
‘Ooo, ‘ communicates a sense of surprise, but that can always be achieved with an exclamation mark. Then we could turn ‘criticism’ into a verb and do away with ‘of the’. Doing that requires us to move the object ‘#thebubble’ to the start of the sentence and move into the active voice (the active voice says ‘John kicked the ball’, whereas the passive voice says ‘The ball was kicked by John’). Shortening the second sentence isn’t as simple because it’s straightforward already. But ‘They’re’ is overtly complex. Changing to ‘Only one series…’ improves that, and changing to ‘Just one series…’ improves that again because although they have the same amount of chars, ‘Only’ has an extra syllable, which adds nothing but weariness in speech, and we should consider syllables as well as chars. Finally the triple full stop adds nothing. It should either indicate a gap in a quotation or suggest an element of mystery, neither of which we need here. So we end up with:
- #thebubble are criticizing the BBC! Just one series for them then
Simon Warrick’s tweet next:
- Since when did celebrity gossip and apologies for their behaviour become the most important news item on the BBC? Tiger Woods is not news!
Sometimes we need to look at the broader picture; at the sentiment being expressed and not the grammar. What this tweet states is that celebrity gossip is not news. So why not just say that? ‘Celebrity gossip is not news’. We don’t have to mention the BBC because this is true on all channels. But that won’t do because this tweet is specifically about Tiger Woods. So we could just add his name. ‘Celebrity gossip about Tiger Woods is not news’. That’s enough to identify the source of the outrage, the current public profile of Tiger being sufficiently high to be sure the public will know which story is being alluded to: his apology about his marital infidelity. However, Tiger by his very nature is a celebrity, so we don’t have to use that word. ‘Gossip about Tiger Woods is not news’. This is much better, but we can go further still. How many celebrities have the first name ‘Tiger’? Just one, making ‘Woods’ redundant. ‘Gossip about Tiger is not news’. That’s it! Only perhaps we have edited out the sense of outrage, which can be reinserted with the simple inclusion of an exclamation mark:
- Gossip about Tiger is not news!
Finally let’s have a look at Jenny’s tweet:
- hmmm. just super glued a paint brush to my tights. think that means it’s time to stop making stuff today.
The author here has done a good job of keeping her words to a minimum. ‘just super glued a paint brush to my tights’ even does away with the need for the first person singular ‘I’. Grammatical suicide, but we understand the context and she’s not going for the Nobel Prize, so that’s fine. Except for ’super’, all those words are single syllable words too, so how can it be improved? Well it’s arguably losing some key detail, but why not discard ’super’? Do we really need to know what kind of glue it is? Probably not. And what about ‘hmmm’? Can we assume the reader will be sympathetic without it? Probably, because no one wants a paint brush stuck to her tights. The second sentence is simpler. ‘think that means’ is clearly redundant because Jenny is posting this tweet so these are clearly her thoughts. The use of ‘glued a paint brush’ in the preceding sentence makes ‘making stuff’ redundant too, because people who use glue & paint brushes are obviously making stuff:
- just glued a paint brush to my tights. time to stop for today
These improvements have two things in common: economy and clarity. Economy is essential because you only have 140 chars to play with, and you want to get the most out of them. Clarity is just essential, whatever you’re writing, because only idiots or people with things to hide say ‘we are in the process of acquiring what the market recognises as the standard in earth management equipment’ when they mean ‘we’re buying a spade’.
Right, have you got it? Why don’t you try editing these four tweets, from Iain Lobb, Make Magazine, Steve Purkiss and Vickie Retallicka, which came just before the four already discussed in my Twitter Stream:
- IL: When I say “AppStore” you say “approved” - “AppStore!” “approved!” “AppStore!” “approved!” Monster Ball on AppStore this weekend. Free!
- MM: Launch your hackerspace into the stratosphere with the Hackerspaces in Space contest: http://cot.ag/aNK9vD
- SP: Sitting in bed contemplating the Grand Canyon that is between me talking in front of an audience and me waxing lyrical elsewhere.
- VR: A facebook game I am working on has gone open beta. Please DM if you would like to be involved!
February 20th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Oversimplification can be a bigger danger than inefficiency. Let’s take the last example, “just glued a paint brush to my tights. time to stop for today”. This makes our correspondent sound like a mentalist who glues stuff to themselves. You were right to question the loss of the word ’super’ as it punches well above its length in terms of nuance. That single word incorporates a whole world of accidental glue based pain which many can relate to.
February 21st, 2010 at 12:38 pm
It’s a good point Owen, oversimplification is always a risk, and ’super’ probably does add important flavour here. But as you didn’t mention them, I’m assuming you agree that ‘think that means’ and ‘making stuff’ can go?
February 21st, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I’d like to see how you would change Steve Purkiss’ tweet. It needs some heavy-duty editing.
February 21st, 2010 at 8:22 pm
The crux of the tweet is that he considers, although the nature of the speaking is the same, that the nature of the audience (for there is surely a different kind of audience “elsewhere”) effects his skill.
Purely editing what is there: “Sitting in bed” is irrelevant and “that is” unnecessary, so they can come out. The order of the 2 comparatives I think is incorrect, as it implies that he is great at talking in front of an audience, but has trouble elsewhere, so I’m assuming that’s backwards. The Grand Canyon metaphor is ok but could be replaced with a shorter word with a similar feel, I think gulf is a good substitute. If we use gulf, then we can use survey instead of contemplate as the meaning is similar, but ties into the geographical metaphor better, and is shorter (I think removing entirely would alter the meaning). “talking in front of an audience” is overly long, and we can roll it together with “waxing lyrical” as they both refer to the same action. “Waxing lyrical” can be replaced with the shorter “eulogising”. “elsewhere” is vague, so I’d change to “to friends”, which is slightly longer, but more meaningful. Finally, we have to deal with “in front of an audience”, which I’m going to replace with “before an audience” because it is shorter, and reads better than “to an audience”. By using “before” we also set up a contrast with the earlier “to friends”, enhancing the formal and informal aspects.
So our final version is
Surveying the gulf between me eulogising to friends and before an audience
In total, 74 characters. I think it retains, and perhaps improves upon, the meaning of the original but is 2/3rds the length.
Could it be shorter?
“A gulf separates me speaking to friends & to an audience” for 56 if we assume the contemplation and remove the kind of speaking and cheat on the &.
“It’s much harder to make an address” comes in at only 35 characters,
boiling it down to pretty much the absolute minimum sentiment, whilst losing all of the subtlety.
February 22nd, 2010 at 12:00 am
Fab! I was thinking ‘gulf’ too, it’s the best word. Even your ultra-basic last version is an improvement on Steve’s original tweet, which was so poorly worded I had to read it three times before I understood it.
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:29 am
I think Mr Purkiss’ tweet is great as it is. I happened to read that one when it was ‘live’ and I totally knew what he meant.
Many of your other examples do lose a lot of the personality through editing. Twitter is a crazy mish-mash of personalities, thoughts and declarations, which thrives, in part, because of the idiosyncratic spelling and grammar employed by its users.
Website copy is probably a more fertile ground for copy that needs pruning.
Interesting post though - thanks!
February 25th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Well I had no idea what he was on about Leif, although I take the point that tweets should have character. Absolutely! Jeremy and Simon’s tweets lost no character through editing, but they were shorter and clearer.
February 27th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
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