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Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’
What I love most about tweets and similar updates is how they impose limits on length. This forces social media participants to focus precisely on what they want to say, a skill more people should sharpen if they want to be heard in our 140-character world.
I honed my write-tight skills in the old days of type-settting, when I had to mentally calculate the space of every character. With headlines especially, I had to be mindful that the anorexic “i” counted for much less than the voluptuous “m.”
On top of writing economically and chopping agressively to fit a rationed space, I had to avoid widows and orphans, lonely words that would require accommodation on a too-precious extra line.
Yet instead of dulling my writing, these constraints usually sharpened it.
Web loosened, Twitter tightened
In freeing us this way, the web enabled busy people to go on and on rather than take the time to wield the editing knife.
Until Twitter. Suddenly long-winded people had to learn to summarize succinctly.
Actually, skilled writers had known this all along, from preparing executive summaries, abstracts, key messages, news leads, brand promises and other crystals of communication. Still, many of the people now expected to write more and more don’t take the time, or have the training, to peel off the layers to reveal their core point.
Overcome obstacles
Many people insist they don’t have the time. But it’s the best way to prevent readers from flitting off to the next information snack.
Fortunately, you can improve through practice. At the same time, you can strengthen your brain’s left-hemisphere capacity for symbolic thinking, with words as the symbols we use to order and convey our thoughts. Writing tightly will get easier. If you want to learn more, I recommend The Brain That Changes Itself by fellow Canadian Norman Doidge.
Other people hear the ghosts of their teachers telling them to present the setting or context before they get to the point. Today that advice bears as much relevance as the caution about ink spills when reloading your fountain pen.
Setting is essential to story structure, but few of you are writing novels. Even then, don’t forget that movies usually start with a dramatic scene to rivet attention then circle back or show the back story in other ways.
Show me the beef–or tofu
Context is often either too boring to hook readers or smacks too much of advertising to entice knowledge-hungry people to proceed to the feast. So wait to use it or consider dumping it if your potential readers already share your perspective or simply don’t care.
For example, a client once asked me to write a very brief web update about a bridge reopening. The bridge officials had released a bloated statement that droned on about their mission, history and stats, why the bridge had closed and more. But for the drivers who simply wanted to plan their trip, 140 characters were more than enough.
Write tight, then chop
In my book Write like you talk–only better, I recommend thinking through a precise version of what you want to say before you start writing, then removing most of what’s superfluous to focus on your core point when you rewrite.
I also provide tips on how to write tight in an earlier post called 5 ways to hook your readers.
Remember that you need to take the time to plan and tighten your communication and strengthen your brain’s left-hemisphere capacity for symbolic thinking, if you’re going to succeed in our 140-character world.
Duchess Wallis Simpon used to say that a woman could never be too thin or too rich. If she were still alive, I think she would add that she–or he–can never be too smart.
So write thin, but keep your ideas rich and clever.
Sometimes people make grammar mistakes when they write in a misguided attempt to sound proper. Maybe they are still afraid of their third grade teacher.
Let me set the record straight. When Mrs. Clarke told you not to say “me,” she was referring to sentences like “Jimmy and I are playing,” that had “I” in the subject.
She didn’t mean that “me” is always wrong. Sentences like “The dog is playing with me and Jimmy,” are fine.
Mrs. Clarke certainly did not want you to take this a step further by saying “myself” instead of “me.” She would whip out the red pen if she saw you write “The dog is playing with Jimmy and myself.”
Let me stress that the only time it’s okay to use the word “myself” is when you did something yourself. That’s it.
Yet, I see people use “I” or “myself” all the time, when they should say “me.”
It’s not just that they are incorrect. Sadly, they sound like they are putting on airs. That does not help us understand each other.
You will not impress Mrs. Clarke by this linguistic equivalent of raising your pinky finger while sipping from a tea cup. You will risk alienating people who care about grammar or crave the intimacy of “me.”
So, let’s pretend that I’m Mrs. Clarke, a nicer version so you won’t be afraid, and that you’re not distracted by Jimmy or thoughts of playing with the dog.
Pay attention, please. I’m going to review two very simple rules.
Use “I” “in the subject of your sentence.
Use “myself” when you do something yourself.
That’s all you have to remember.
Your homework is life.
Class dismissed.
I spent much of my weekend glued to the television, watching the amazing coverage of the G20 summit protests in Toronto. With multiple cameras and reporters zipping between action sites, displayed on split screens, I felt as close to the action as I wanted to be.
City Pulse news (CP24), a feisty neighborhood channel, was backed by its relatively new owner CTV, a large Canadian network. The result was an in-your-face local perspective, partly directed and supported by citizen journalists, backed by big-time resources.
I switched to the competition a few times, but saw mostly CBC anchors safely ensconced in their studio or regular programming on Global. CP24 was the accident I did not want to keep watching, but couldn’t resist.
News as spectacle
Let me admit I’m one of those people who is mesmerized by TV news theater like CNN’s Shock and Awe light show. Thanks goodness, I’m not a soccer fan, or I would have had to toggle between protests and World Cup matches.
As soon as I saw the first scuffle of protesters and police on Friday evening, I was hooked. I worried about my twenty-something nieces, two of the thousands of people planning to peacefully march for worthwhile causes.
When all hell broke loose on Saturday, with those sinister, masked Black Bloc anarchists, I was bounced from Anne and Stephanie in the studio to Farrah, Omar, Craig, Naomi, Lisa, Austin and a huge cast of reporters on the scenes.
Strumming while Toronto burns
Probably the most dramatic was on Saturday evening when one live screen showed a police car blazing, with no cops in sight, while another displayed hundreds of armored police arresting protesters at Queen’s Park. As was suggested later, our provincial capital, the officially sanctioned site for the peaceful protests, had been infiltrated by the bad guys who were trying to deflect attention with their fiery antics.
On Sunday, one of the protests came to within a couple miles of my home. But seeing as they were directed at the temporary detention center, ironically the former filming site for a cop drama, I didn’t worry about the angry hordes coming closer.
The coverage became more about arrests than free speech zest. Commercials and replays replaced much of the live action. So I was relieved to pry myself away from the television, to prepare for my G20 barbecue summit (tag line: make food, not protest).
I don’t want to go into the big questions of good versus bad protesters, police, free speech, the role of the G20 or the ego and wisdom of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If I started writing about these, I probably would not stop until the Korean summit, where I will not have a ring-side seat.
How social media played
But I would like to add my two cents about social media. No doubt this was the most photographed and videoed summit ever. I saw more cameras than banners raised. Many of the participants were not even protesting. They came to witness and record history. Had it not been for the rain, citizen journalists might have outnumbered police.
Flickr is bursting with amateur photo and video, many better quality than the professional shots.
If the police did, as some of the hundreds arrested insisted, use unnecessarily force, they will be held accountable. Think of how the world would have remembered Black Sunday or Kent State if citizen video-journalism had been alive. Think of the grilling World Cup officials will get with that bad ref call caught on countless cameras.
On the other hand, most of the Twitter coverage was banal. The Twitter feed displayed on CP24 was mostly solid citizens thanking the police for protecting our city. Not much more from the locals I follow on Twitter.
I’m sure many CP24 elves were busy behind the scenes, sifting through and verifying the social media tidal wave, which they selectively featured.
Herd protesters and media
Of course texting, Twitter, Facebook et al were critical means of herding protesters and media to the next action site. But beyond that, I couldn’t see a profound impact.
Then just before I sank into sleep Sunday night, I couldn’t resist one last look. A university student was talking via cell phone to CP24, while the screen displayed a Facebook photo of him shaking hands with the prime minister.
Sammy explained how he’d just come down to take photos, but ended up corralled into what he called “a human box” by police no doubt eager to end the weekend’s mayhem but unwilling or unable to cart more bystanders to the overflowing detention center. His camera and phone were damaged by the heavy rain. Wet, tired and cranky, he just wanted to go home.
Ah ha. The peaceful protesters and the violent anarchists were expected. Sammy and his friends were the new news story.
This morning I was glad to see no one was seriously injured and our city survived mostly intact.
And I’m glad that I got to watch, from the safety of my couch, such a spectacular, yet authentic unfolding of history. Our peaceful city will never see anything like this again. Neither will our media coverage.