Email, text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of Internet communities have changed the way people interact.
Am I against using these new ways to communicate? Absolutely not. I use them, too, and find it quite enjoyable to interact with friends both old and new.
Am I tempted to shorten my messages and tweets with letters and numerals such as: I want 2 C U 2 day? Not really.
Because I am a writer and a grammar teacher, I find it a challenge to condense my words into succinct phrases, clauses, and sentences that convey my exact meaning while using fewer words.
With practice, anyone can become a better writer. One of the best ways to improve one’s writing is to cut extraneous words from essays, letters, emails, or manuscripts.
In fact, Twitter is a great place for people to learn to practice reducing long, convoluted, rambling sentences into 140 character tweets.
Click here to download a free exercise to practice reducing longer sentences into shorter, concise statements.
For more practice, visit my store for a lesson called The ABC’s of Idioms and Inflated Language.
