140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form
140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form
Make the most of your messages on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites
The advent of Twitter and other social networking sites, as well as the popularity of text messaging, have made short-form communication an everyday reality. But expressing yourself clearly in short bursts-particularly in the 140-character limit of Twitter-takes special writing skill.
In 140 Characters, Twitter co-creator Dom Sagolla covers all the basics of great short-form writing, including the importance of communicating with simplicity, honesty, and humor. For marketers and business owners, social media is an increasingly important avenue for promoting a business-this is the first writing guide specifically dedicated to communicating with the succinctness and clarity that the Internet age demands.
- Covers basic grammar rules for short-form writing
- The equivalent of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for today’s social media-driven marketing messages
- Helps you develop your own unique short-form writing style
140 Characters is a much-needed guide to the kind of communication that can make or break a reputation online.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Book. Awesome. Buy.
Clearly explains some simple concepts not only for Twitter, but writing in general. Hemingway’s writing style. I get it now. Buy this book.
5 Stars Revolution.Here.Now
This book nails it:Twitter is not about captialism(who owns the most) but socialism(who gives the most).Written in a feverish, quick paced style, it propels you through how to write an effective and memorable tweet. And makes the argument that forcing us to be brief makes for better thinking and writing and understanding.
5 Stars Dive in to this before getting feet wet on Twitter
Written by one of the creators of Twitter, this book speaks to the brilliance of Twitter and developing the craftsmanship to maximize both it and one’s communication skills. Indeed, simplicity takes both knowledge & practice. Start with the knowledge of both what to do and what not to do. You’ll wish this had been a required course before anyone opened a Twitter account.
2 Stars It’s not really a style guide and the writing is not polished
This book is interesting for the fact that is was written by a venerable user of Twitter; One of Twitter’s first employees in fact, @dom (Dom Sagolla).
As a book, it is lacking of a number of important things. It’s not really about writing and style, but is more about how Sagolla’s thinks you should use Twitter. This turns out to be an interesting thing to read about, but this is not the book’s advertised subject matter. The writing style is terse and fragmentary, which makes many of the points inconclusive and confusing. As the book goes on it get increasingly less organized, and the overall cohesion and editing is poor.
A full review is here, [...]
4 Stars Makes you think, not so much act…
This book is not so much about tips and tricks, but getting one to think differently (or, pardon the cliche, outside the box) and to be thoughtful relative to “the short form” of online writing. It gave me some great ideas and reinvigorated my interest in social media.
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