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Twitter: Is it killing good grammar?

I must admit that I am growing into a Twitter fan. It allows for brief posts that don’t require a lot of editing and thought. It’s there, in it’s uncomplicated form, for everyone with something to say. It’s great for keeping a small band of friends informed of your daily actions as well as helping build a broader following. The beauty is that you can use it any way you see fit.

But there’s an evil downside lurking. Bad grammar. Bad punctuation. As a writer and sometimes English teacher, I realized I am judged every time I put the pencil to paper and string words together. For me, posting on Twitter is a torturous experience, but I’m learning to let go and break a few rules just to stay under the 140-character limit per posting.

But there are a few places I can’t seem to go in regard to staying under the limit. It must be my journalism training and still being able to hear a copy editor screaming grammatical rules at me from across the newsroom.

So this is where I will not tread with my Twitter posts:

• Using 2 instead of two, to or too (remember, you spell out numbers until you get to ten or 10)
• Thru instead of through (thru just ain’t a word…never was and never will be)
• Skipping a comma where it is required (remember, a missing comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence)
• Missing words for the sake of staying under the limited space
• Misspellings (a Twitter post is not as long as a thesis, so checking your spelling before hitting the send button should not take long)

But with this said, I pledge to Tweet On. Get the message out.

Follow me at www.twitter.com/roncreel