Twitter: A “Dream 10″ Guide on How to Say it in 140 Characters (Part I)

“Omit Yourself (I, Me) Where Possible“

While there are areas of your Tweet that you will *have* to include “I” to make sense, overall you can look to eliminate referencing yourself- because the Tweet is coming from you, in many instances it becomes obvious that it is regarding you- making the “I” a waste of space.  But just one character? Can this really clutter the Tweet THAT badly? Oh, yes, my Twit-student. Indeed it can.

Let’s examine some samples:

The sentence is clear enough and easy to understand, but unfortunately doesn’t fit in 140 chars: It’s -5 over.  Let’s look at what happens if we remove the references to the self (this means any form of “I” when possible):

First, we’ve removed the initial “I”- we know, as it’s your post, *you* went to the store.  Now, when the elephant asks “if I had seen” Survivor, it’s clear that only the two of you are involved.  Compared to the two posts, the elephant isn’t asking a specific question about Survivor, and since it is a TV show it’s quite clear that people *watch* TV shows.  Therefore, you can remove the unnecessary reference to the Elephant asking “if you had seen” it, and simply point out the elephant asked about it. Readers will assume that means the elephant wants to know something about Survivor.

Since the quote in this post is necessary to indicate WHO said it, there is an instance of “I” that must remain.  However, you can clean up the grammar a bit with a more direct “I said”.  Likewise, both of you laughed, and it’s quite short and elegant to state “we laughed’.

Keep in mind: This isn’t only about the specific word “I” or “me”, etc.  This applies to the surrounding words around use of these identifiers.  If you’re saying things like “Did you know that I’m so exhausted?” You can eliminate all of that to “So exhausted!”  You don’t need to identify generic readers (”Did you know”) and you definitely don’t need to use “that I’m”, as you’re writing the Tweet!”  Keep this in mind- the use of “I” is not just about that one character.  Look carefully and figure out a cleaner way to say it.

Look at the character count differential: -5 to 19.  Just by being attentive to your use of “I” and other self-indentifiers, you have gone from a post that doesn’t fit to a post that has room for tags and RTs.  Well done!

What could tip two be? Let’s find out!