The New Yorker published an article called, “The Construction of a Twitter Aesthetic”, this past week.  I bring up this article because not only was it a good read, but it held some incredibly astonishing truth within it.

The thing that I found informative and interesting was this one sentence:

“Twitter style works beyond the hundred-forty-character limit.”

At first, this made absolutely no sense to me at all. Twitter is all about the character limit, how can you expand that use? But as I sat there and thought about it (I was currently tweeting as I read the article), I finally grasped what the author was trying to say.

When you use Twitter, you develop a certain persona under your handle. The things you say come out concise and witty, which ,we as journalists, try to achieve daily. So, to my understanding, the use of “twitter style” beyond its infamous character limit refers to writing eloquently and concise at longer posts.

By limiting the amount of words and letters you can use, you train yourself to only write and include the absolute necessary information. Therefore, if you take this skill when writing an article, you already have the skills needed to include only the stuff you really need to convey your thought and idea. Mind-blowing.