Writing Tips | Poetry
Make Your Twittle Count
We’re making twittle history
Hi, I am the curator of twittles among many roles and titles I’m everyone’s twittle inspector and a pedantic letter counter
I love reading others’ twittles But watch out! I scan them like a hawk One letter off the magic score Excuse me, we need to talk!
If you’re the intrepid writer who didn’t get their twittle right expect a PN from yours truly I don’t mean to give you a fright
I’ll thank you for your efforts and tell you who I think I am then proceed to break the news Sorry, your poem’s not a twittle! BAM! 💥
Please don’t be offended as I always offer a helping hand I’ll suggest a way to fix the poem so it’s the twittle you had planned
Believe me you’re not the only one to mess up a twittle verse There’s many who’ve come before you and some have done much worse
Twittle’s one hundred letter count is a common cause of errors Mixing up the terminology, characters vs alphabet letters
To spell it out, a rule of thumb Only alphabet letters matter Punctuation ’n’ spaces do not count nor symbols, emojis, numbers
If counting letters drives you nutty (31) workarounds make it easier (+23) Count the letters per each line (+26) Total all four together (+20 = 100)
Better yet are handy apps Oh, where would we be without them? The best I’ve found is this one here - charactercounttool dot com 👌
Heed my advice, you can’t go wrong Alpha tool has it all sorted Write your twittle on the screen Letter metric auto-recorded
Use this one simple trick and you’re a twittle whizz in no time One hundred letters in four lines jazzy it up with some rhyme
I trust my twittle guide helps all those who aim for mastery Your skills will be rewarded You’ll have made twittle history! 🙌
© Carolyn Hastings 2023
Woohoo! I do believe I’ve set a new world record in twittling! Thirteen twittle stanzas in one poem! ⭐️ 🏆
A meta twittle poem!
Please excuse me for writing ‘twittle’ lots and lots — it’s because I’m trying to teach the Google bots to recognise the term, and by doing that, make it easier for everyone to find ‘twittle’ in their keyword searches.
Because of course you want to learn more about twittles!
Who wouldn’t?
Twittles, as more and more of you here on Medium have discovered, are fun. 😃
But also harder than you think. 😟
Because they do just that — they make you think! 🤔
And count. 🧮
Who knew counting to 100 could be so tricky?! 😓
It’s the main reason why I wrote my mega-meta twittle poem.
A Bit of Twittle Backstory
For the sake of those who have no idea what I’m talking about, please allow me to backtrack a bit on the twittle story.
Much to my delight, there has been a recent flurry of twittle activity on Medium, thanks to first-time twittlers — Annie Trevaskis, Sheila McCall, Wire Editor Newman, Pamela Oglesby, Joe Merkle, Denise Estey Lindquist, John Hansen, Robin Klammer, Denise Kendig, Ted Czukor, Tejaswini Katreddy — who have motivated others to join them in a spin around Medium aboard the Twittle Expressery.
Each time a writer picks it up and sends it to another, things change. It’s like the Telephone game.
And so it is. Little bits of miscommunication here ’n’ there have threatened to derail the twittle train. That’s why I’ve taken it upon myself — the one who introduced twittles to Medium in October 2020 — to be the twittle inspector and check everyone’s twittles for twittle tag status.
Only those twittles that pass inspection are accepted into the Twittle Treasury list.
Curating the Twittle Treasury list is the only way I have to ensure the twittle brand does not go the way of haiku and becomes an anything-goes-free-for-all.
To pass the twittle test, the poem must have –
- 100 alphabet letters - exactly - no exceptions
- 4 lines that read like poetry - not conveniently chopped up sentences
- rhyme scheme - a minimum of two lines with rhyming end words
In poetry jargon, a twittle is a 100-letter quatrain.
A twittle can be a single standalone micropoem like the one I wrote last week,
or
A twittle can be one of any number of twittle verses that go to make a longer poem, like the 13-stanza poem I’ve written for this story.
Letter Count Makes or Breaks a Twittle
The 100-alphabet letter rule is non-negotiable.
Every letter, A-Z, in the four-line verse is counted. If the letter count is not exactly 100, it’s not a twittle, pure and simple. No dispute. The twittle inspector has spoken! 😜
But don’t be fooled.
All letters are characters but not all characters are letters.
In digi-speak, a character is defined as ‘any letter, number, space, punctuation mark, or symbol typed or entered on a computer’. This includes emojis which can often be more than one character — like this one, 😎, which is three characters.
A character count is not the same as a letter count.
Apart from splitting out spaces, character counting tools may or may not differentiate the various types of characters — in fact, most of them don’t, including the character counters in MS Word and Google Docs i.e. don’t trust them — don’t use them.
In fact, the only free online character counting tool I have found that actually gives you an accurate alphabet letter count is this one —
Look, they even call it ‘The Best Character Counter’ because it is!! 💯
As the screenshot below shows, the Character Counter tool gives you a range of metrics that other counting tools don’t. The only metric needed for for twittles is ‘Alpha Characters’ (highlighted with a red arrow). None of the other metrics matter.
Let’s Twittle
I hope I’ve cleared up the misconceptions about twittles and letter-character counts. I hope by doing so, everyone can get on and enjoy twittling with confidence. Let’s twittle! 😊
I can help you with your twittle if you think you might get stuck It’s worth a go, you never know, a twittle might bring you luck! 🥳
It’s all aboard the Twittle Expressery, stopping all stations around Medium, including Engage — assuming Rui Alves and Apex Rock let me stop at their publication-station! 🙏
Thank you all for reading. 🙏 💕
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