140 Characters, Huh

The point of this exercise is to see just what a 140 character limit looks like. That sentence has only 80 characters. This makes it to 140. [27 words]

It confirms my observation that Twitter is ideal for teaching people how to write good cut lines. Present active voice helps to pull it off. [25 words]

It is almost like saying that one has 29 words or less, so long as the words are short, to make a point. Using bigger words buggers it up. [29 words]

Just like everything else in journalism, the re-write is where it is at. There is nothing that cannot be improved, especially the new Tweet. [25 words]

Personally, I have trouble thinking that Tweeting is important to anyone without a broadband gadget and an extra $30 bucks a month to spend. [24 words]

Then again I probably said the same sort of thing when I was forced to use a word processor instead of an electronic typewriter by my boss. [27 words]

“Damn it Jim, I’m a writer, not some digital space scribbler!” Bones McCoy barked. “Besides that, the character count includes quote marks.” [22 words]

And the good doctor would have been correct, even if he used the word quote instead of quotation; but I am digressing from my original point. [26 words]

At some point the discussion about danger has already been discussed by others. Things like texting while hiking or driving get people killed. [23 words]

Perhaps a discussion about just plain flat being rude is in order; although to date I have not read anything about Tweeting while copulating. [24 words]

For those waiting for me to bring up Sarah Palin in the Tweeting context, wait no more. I just did, by shrinking political discourse process. [25 words]

Can you imagine how much money it would cost to get the Klondike Twitterer to endorse a broadband texting gadget? Think of an i-Palin device. [25 words]

It would doubtless have an American language debasing app and another one that makes up words. But I hope that’s all in some distant future. [25 words]

In the long run, writing a letter by hand, using a pen and ink, and developing personal handwriting may actually become in vogue and return. [25 words]

Hopefully I have made my point. The average word count in this exercise was 25 words. And my point, in case you missed it, was get over fads. [28 words]

It’s not like I wrote about the Hoola-Hoop. Think of a fountain pen as a hand held, fluid medium, friction driven, analogue texting devise. [forget the count]

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originally published on Blogcritics as "140 Characters, Huh", December 30, 2010