140 Characters or Less: An Example

I've written earlier about how interesting Twitter and text messages are for writers. It can be a real chore expressing yourself in 140 characters or less. But in working within that restriction, it forces you to learn how to write as efficiently as possible. I am still fascinated by this and wanted to share an example.

I was talking with a friend through text messaging, so I had 128 characters to say what I want. A thought popped into my head that I wanted to ask. If I was in person, I would have said, "So, I was thinking, if you took a hamburger patty and cut it into two patties, then put cheese between them, would that technically be a double cheeseburger?"

That sentence is 157 characters. That doesn't sound a lot more than128, but if you don't know how to pare down a sentence, it will be difficult to trim down. So start at the beginning. We don't need to say "So". It's a verbal cue. It grabs a person's attention so they know to listen up. In a text message, the person knows they are being addressed, so you don't need to grab their attention.

The next thing to drop is "I was thinking". The very fact that you are asking a question indicates that you were thinking about it. When we say that we've been thinking about something, it means that we have been pondering it for a while as opposed to having it just pop into our heads (which we also announce if it is the case). Still, it is extraneous information, so cutting it out doesn't hurt you.

Our sentence is now down to, "If you took a hamburger patty and cut it into two patties, then put cheese between them, would that technically be a double cheeseburger?" This is 137 characters, so we are almost there. We've taken out the extraneous phrases, so let's tighten up the bulk of the sentence itself.

In the first phrase (If you took a hamburger patty and cut it into two patties), the redundancy of the word "patty" immediately stands out. In fact, since hamburger can mean the patty, you don't need it at all. You can also be more direct with the phrase and get the subject and verb out there sooner. By keeping it totally Spartan, we can turn it into "If you cut a burger in two".

The next phrase (then put cheese between them) is pretty good as it is, but if I change "between" to "on", then it indicates cheese on both patties (which is more traditional for a double cheeseburger anyway) and saves 5 characters.

At this point, we have "If you cut a burger in two, then put cheese on them, would that technically be a double cheeseburger?" This is 101 characters, so we've already reached the threshold, but we can still cut the last part down.

The last part of the sentence (would that technically be a double cheeseburger?) can be pared down easily. Turn "would. . .be" into "is", turn "that" into "it", and cut out "technically". Now you have, "is it a double cheeseburger?"

We now have the sentence, "If you cut a burger in two, then put cheese on them, is it a double cheeseburger?" This is 81 characters, well within our limit, and about as short as you can get without using abbreviations.

Truth be told, I don't like this sentence. It may be short, but it doesn't sound good. Efficiency isn't about making a sentence as short as it possibly can. It's about getting the most bang for your buck. I have 47 characters to play with. If I can add to those sentence and make it more effective, it is worth it.

I think "hamburger" works better than "burger". Also, since a hamburger can be either the patty or the whole thing with a bun and fixings, I want to put "patty" in there. Although the whole sentence implies that it is just a patty being cut in two, it is less confusing to specify that right away. Any normal person who hears that a hamburger is cut in two would assume that the circle would be cut into two half-circles, not that it would be cut into two thinner circles, so I want to clarify that, too.

Ultimately, I end up with the sentence, "If you cut a thick hamburger into two thinner patties and put cheese on each of them, would that be a double cheeseburger?" This is 122 characters. It is close to the limit, but it fits just fine. You may notice that I ended up putting back a number of things that I took out. The fact of the matter is that I liked them better. The way I said the sentence at the beginning is how I would have written it if I could. I cut it down because it didn't fit.

The reason I kept cutting more than necessary was that I needed to know how much space I had to work with while still keeping the heart of my idea. When I saw how much extra space I had, I decided to put in the words and phrases that sounded better, even though they were bigger.

The important thing to realize is that my original sentence and my final sentence are still different. I still have a lot of unnecessary phrases removed and I think it conveys my idea a little better. My original sentence sounds better when spoken, but my final sentence looks better in print.

This is why working within a limit is beneficial. It forces you to think about all of these aspects. It forces you to edit yourself. It forces you to ask yourself, can I do this better? I also think it's a fun game to play. But even if you don't enjoy doing this, you should still do it. Call it a writing exercise and tell yourself it is good for you and that's reason enough to do it. Because it's true. If you want to be a better writer and you don't have other people to help you or if you just don't know how to get better than you are, this will force you to develop the skills you need to become a better writer. If you do enjoy doing it, that's just gravy.