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

“Just Must Die”

I just have to point out that using “just” is a time-honored writer’s bane, and something that people abuse in writing every single second of the day.  I lost count after several million uses of “just”- and have started to do my best to pay attention to nixing this word in almost all cases.  It simply isn’t necessary in most scenarios.

Let’s examine some samples:

First off, this makes the person sound like a modern-day valley girl.  “Just” really doesn’t add anything of value to a sentence except in the rarest of occasions: “Indiana Jones swapped the bag of sand with the idol.  The pressure plate didn’t react- he had added just enough sand to fool it.”  Frankly, even in that sentence you could reword it without using “just”, but the lesson here is- on Twitter, when you need the space- you don’t need “just” 99 percent of the time.

Look at how much space has been cleared by eliminating the use of “just” and fixing the “I” references! -7 to 46! Now THAT is maximizing your post space.  Well done! The Tweet is vastly easier to read and understand.

Now I’m excited- what’s tip 3?