Wasted characters

Although Twitter allows 140 characters, it's not a good idea to use them all. The less characters in your tweet, the greater the likelihood that your Twitter friends can retweet your tweets, and/or otherwise converse and interact with you.

The shorter the better.

There are a lot of ways you can cut down on the number of characters without losing ANY of the content. Here are a few which come to mind.

Things that can be left out, with no loss:

-"check this out"
-"watch this"
-"here is" or "here are"
-"for more info go to"
-unnecessary periods & colons
-"to buy tickets click here"
-excess hashtags
-"I uploaded a"
-"in case you missed it" or "ICYMI"
-"How" or "Why" [i.e., instead of "How X will impact...", or "Why X will impact..." why not just say "X will impact"?]
-"Study shows..." or "Report shows.."
-"Here's how" or "here's why"
-"a" & "the"
-"breaking:" or "breaking news:"

Things that can be shortened, with no loss:

-"eight" -- 8
-"million" -- M
-"billion" -- B
-"3:00 to 4:00 p.m." -- "3-4pm"
-"and" -- "&"
-"News from the Associated Press" -- "AP:"

Undoubtedly I'll come up with new things to add to the above list, and so will you; so if you have any good ones, shoot me a comment and I'll update the list from time to time.

-Ray

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