Short & Tweet: Condense Your Thinking to 140 Characters Without Sounding Like a Teenager

"I didn't have the time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."

Mark Twain, who penned that quote in the era of the quill pen and the typewriter, had readers with the patience to sit and finish a multi-page letter.

Today, when Blackberries and netbooks are constantly giving us updates, conciseness rules. 

Many tweeters cram more content into their Twitter box by using texting  symbols or making up abbreviations on the fly.  The trouble is, this can baffle your audience and make you come across like a teenager.  

The Thots-4-U version:  
Prs relses dont reach tgted auds as used to. Noone reads paper anymr! Instd, use socl md optmzd relses, bookmks, twts, blogs 4 outreach.

The grownup version: 
Press releases for print? Get better outreach and targeting with blogs, bookmarking, Twitter, social media-optimized releases.

When the goal of tweeting is to get hired for one's intelligence, you should maintain your dignity and condense your ideas using real words instead of creating a cryptic telegram.  But how?

For just $29.95, learn how to chop, shrink and fit ideas into less space with the report Shorter: Say It In Fewer Words.  Or just keep reading.

"Marcia shows that concise writing is method, not magic. Thanks for this valuable report!" - Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, Founder, Syntax Training, Seattle, WA

Master Pithiness with Micro- and Nano-editing Techniques

Here are 11 techniques that help you convey a complicated idea in a small space, with each one followed by an example.  

1. Set the topic by stating it at the beginning, followed by a colon or question mark.  This enables you to dispense with at least one verb and often a lot of other context-setting words as well.

See "grownup version" above.

2. Eliminate "and" before the last item in a series.

See "grownup version" above.

3. When you're disagreeing with someone or something, quote the other point of view, then state your opinion without quotation marks.

"Social Security is collapsing." If Baby Boomers prefer to continue working after age 65, this may not be catastrophic.  

4. Use short, declarative sentences and just one-word transitions to indicate the relationship between ideas.

Unsolicited criticism never convinces its targets to hire you. Instead, write “don’t do X” articles, which attract clients ready to improve.

5. Omit the subject of a sentence in an exclamation that comments on the previous sentence.

   Great marketing not only generates leads but also ups your chances of closing the deal at the fee you deserve. Worth the investment!

6. Replace "or" or "and" with a slash.

When starved for space, with no room for all 5 W's, concentrate on who/what/why over when/where.

7. Use short, vivid words.

In previous examples: ups instead of increases; starved instead of running out of.

8. Prune multi-word verbs.

Replace make an arrangement with arrange, have a wish with wish.

9. Eliminate "that," "which" or "who" whenever possible.

Change at the fee that you deserve to at the fee you deserve.

10. Replace flowing thoughts with perky questions.

Instead of I hope you got the idea, write Got the idea?

11. Turn modifying phrases into space-saving compound adjectives.

Change friends with biodiesel cars to biodiesel-car friends.

Gain More Pith Power

In a lively, interactive style, Shorter: Say It in Fewer Words conveys lessons picked up from 25+ years of working with top magazine editors and public radio producers and of wordsmithing for a broad range of business clients.  

For just $29.95, it's 38 pages and includes four you-try-it exercises where you discover how to cut up to 75% of the verbiage - without losing any essential points.  As with all downloadable reports available from this web site, it comes with a money-back satisfaction guarantee.  ORDER NOW.

There's no need to go illiterate on Twitter.  Mark Twain wrote, "I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way."  If your target market doesn't feel that way, get Shorter and learn how to communicate respectably with fewer words.  ORDER NOW.