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excerpt Tweet-worthy
Andy:
from "The Meaning of a Tweet," by Rebecca Larson, IVP - Strangely Dim, 25 August 2009

This idea [of concise communication] certainly isn’t new. How about the book of Proverbs? “When words are many, sin is not absent, / but he who holds his tongue is wise” (10:19). At seventy-eight characters, including spaces and punctuation, eminently tweetable. What about memorable speeches? We don’t remember the whole speech. But the short quotes are bite-sized, so they stick. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country” (seventy-nine characters). Long? No. Meaningful? Yes. Or how about song lyrics? “I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls, only to be with you. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”—128 characters. Tweet it, baby.

This highly lauded poem by William Carlos Williams could be tweeted with 51 characters to spare:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Or this Japanese Haiku:

old pond . . .
a frog leaps in
water’s sound

Simple. Beautiful. Tweet-worthy.