#140charactersorless

Twitter poses a challenge for many of us with its limited character count - 140 characters or less everytime you use the micro-blogging network. As soon-to-be professional writers, many students and bloggers find the restriction a difficult one to meet as we try to craft powerful messages. Still, Twitter is a most effective tool for disseminating information and it may pay to establish a clearer, tighter style of prose.

Solutions to the 140-character dilemma:

1. Reduce phrases to one word - Sometimes, we find ourselves writing as we would speak. We include words that (like most adjectives) that can easily be eliminated.
   For example:   "The students who are experienced at drumming may win many scholarships." A Twitter version of the same sentence might read like this: "Student drummers win scholarships."
2. Eliminate empty openers -  "There is" and "There are" often prove unnecessary. They add no value to most sentences other than taking up valuable character space.
   For example:   "There is only one chairman of the department," is grammatically correct, but " The department chair," is more concise.
3. Minimize Modifiers -  Using words like "very" and "really" are ingrained habits for many young writers, but breaking the habit will allow your writing to be more cohesive. Most modifiers are unnecessary, have little value and only lessen the impact of more powerful word choices.  For example:  "The man was very happy to see his kids." Sure, that's a proper sentence, but one written more effectively as, "He was happy to see his kids."

For more tips, visit the Owl Purdue Writing Lab!

We'll Tweet you here again next week!
-- Kathryn and Allyson --