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Although telegrams are not restricted to 140 characters, this guide translates well to writing tweets. It will not take long before an article "How to Write Twe

Although telegrams are not restricted to 140 characters, this guide translates well to writing tweets. It will not take long before an article "How to Write Tweets Properly" (2016) (twitter.com)" is posted to HN.

jschulenklopper 11y ago
Ho, been there, done that: https://biz.twitter.com/en-gb/write-good-tweets https://biz.twitter.com/en-gb/write-good-tweets, although that one does not focus on restricting word/character count.
logicallee 11y ago
>this guide translates well to writing tweets I thought it would, so I read this guide (for the first time) after doing find-replace in the source code of Telegram, Telegraph, telegram, and telegraph with Tweet, Tweet, tweet, and tweet respectively. The guide does NOT translate well to writing tweets! At all. It's fine grammatically, but the whole guide becomes nonsense. The specific advice on writing, e.g. "20th" as "twentieth" (because the former was counted as two words and the latter as one) does not translate at all. What it says about billing is nonsense. What it says about delivery is nonsense. What it says about customs and how tweets are used is nonsense. The whole guide becomes nonsense. you would think it would still have excellent parts - but not really.
- logicallee 11y ago
  Apparently two downvoters disagreed with me, so can you point out any sentences at all that you find useful or relevant? I didn't read it all the way through but guide seemed completely irrelevant to tweeting. Obviously reducing tweet length is important for everyone, and a hard skill to master: this guide doesn't include anything that can be used. In particular the abbreviations don't seem current. Then there are whole sections of advice like this: >' for feet >"for inches >% for percent >@ for at >should be written "feet," "inches," "percent," "at," etc. Which is obviously literally the opposite advice of that which you would use for tweeting. Or look at: >For example, a press correspondent might ,first write this dispatch: >"The enemy has not yet been met or even seen on account of the entanglements thrown up during the night," etc. >Revised for the cable, this dispatch might read: >"Enemy unmet unseen account entanglements upthrown night." They say "upthrown" instead of "thrown up" because upthrown is 1 word but "thrown up" is 2. The words they omit are ones that editors might put back in. But it's not something you can tweet! (Account instead of "on account of".) If you tweeted "Enemy unmet unseen account entanglements upthrown night" absolutely nobody would understand what you mean. The whole guide does not really translate in any way to tweeting. I think perhaps my downvoters thought that I was being too literal, that I shouldn't expect it to -- but why not? Brevity is the underlying style focus in each, so you would think that a lot of the guide would translate! It simply doesn't. Being extremely brief and using specific techniques to be briefer is an important skill used in both telegrams and tweeting, and the advice I read here doesn't in any way translate into tweeting. You can't use any of it.
  - jschulenklopper 11y ago
    (Upvoted your reply because it is relevant and adds to the discussion; thanks.) Obviously, a lot of the advise is targeted to the telegraph domain, for example in reducing words (instead of characters), not using punctuation marks (because they are words), and how addresses should be written (and we have mentions). So, in a very literal sense of this "HOWTO", I agree that it does not translate well to tweeting. On second reading, I guess I was (and still am) impressed by the relevance of the table of contents (section headers) for tweeting, and that it _could_ be used in a guide on "how to write tweets". So, the actual advice does perhaps not translate well, but the structure is relevant. Perhaps I got carried away by reading the TOC.

jschulenklopper 11y ago

Ho, been there, done that: https://biz.twitter.com/en-gb/write-good-tweets https://biz.twitter.com/en-gb/write-good-tweets, although that one does not focus on restricting word/character count.

logicallee 11y ago

>this guide translates well to writing tweets I thought it would, so I read this guide (for the first time) after doing find-replace in the source code of Telegram, Telegraph, telegram, and telegraph with Tweet, Tweet, tweet, and tweet respectively. The guide does NOT translate well to writing tweets! At all. It's fine grammatically, but the whole guide becomes nonsense. The specific advice on writing, e.g. "20th" as "twentieth" (because the former was counted as two words and the latter as one) does not translate at all. What it says about billing is nonsense. What it says about delivery is nonsense. What it says about customs and how tweets are used is nonsense. The whole guide becomes nonsense. you would think it would still have excellent parts - but not really.

logicallee 11y ago
Apparently two downvoters disagreed with me, so can you point out any sentences at all that you find useful or relevant? I didn't read it all the way through but guide seemed completely irrelevant to tweeting. Obviously reducing tweet length is important for everyone, and a hard skill to master: this guide doesn't include anything that can be used. In particular the abbreviations don't seem current. Then there are whole sections of advice like this: >' for feet >"for inches >% for percent >@ for at >should be written "feet," "inches," "percent," "at," etc. Which is obviously literally the opposite advice of that which you would use for tweeting. Or look at: >For example, a press correspondent might ,first write this dispatch: >"The enemy has not yet been met or even seen on account of the entanglements thrown up during the night," etc. >Revised for the cable, this dispatch might read: >"Enemy unmet unseen account entanglements upthrown night." They say "upthrown" instead of "thrown up" because upthrown is 1 word but "thrown up" is 2. The words they omit are ones that editors might put back in. But it's not something you can tweet! (Account instead of "on account of".) If you tweeted "Enemy unmet unseen account entanglements upthrown night" absolutely nobody would understand what you mean. The whole guide does not really translate in any way to tweeting. I think perhaps my downvoters thought that I was being too literal, that I shouldn't expect it to -- but why not? Brevity is the underlying style focus in each, so you would think that a lot of the guide would translate! It simply doesn't. Being extremely brief and using specific techniques to be briefer is an important skill used in both telegrams and tweeting, and the advice I read here doesn't in any way translate into tweeting. You can't use any of it.
- jschulenklopper 11y ago
  (Upvoted your reply because it is relevant and adds to the discussion; thanks.) Obviously, a lot of the advise is targeted to the telegraph domain, for example in reducing words (instead of characters), not using punctuation marks (because they are words), and how addresses should be written (and we have mentions). So, in a very literal sense of this "HOWTO", I agree that it does not translate well to tweeting. On second reading, I guess I was (and still am) impressed by the relevance of the table of contents (section headers) for tweeting, and that it _could_ be used in a guide on "how to write tweets". So, the actual advice does perhaps not translate well, but the structure is relevant. Perhaps I got carried away by reading the TOC.