Alltop.com

The moral is that the brevity of an e-mail message, a blog post, a text message, even a tweet, is no obstacle to powerful information, a persuasive argument, a literary moment, a zinger, a joke. These forms need not be word dumps, any more than the short forms that preceded them by decades and centuries.

via poynter.org

Over on Poynter.org, Roy Peter Clark, producer of the hit podcast “Writing Tools” on iTunes U, ruminates on his entrance to Twitter. An old school writer and wordsmith, Clark discusses whether the popular microblogging phenomenon is deteriorating our language skills or in fact helping them blossom. His inquiry is thoughtful, and I especially appreciated his comparison to old telegraph forms (“Samuel F. B. Morse, founder of the telegraph, sending his first formal message, 1844: WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT.”)

Read Clark’s article to see his verdict on whether Twitter is a help or hurt to language. Certainly, Clark re-inspires the sanctity of language—140 characters or beyond.

Writing or tweeting? We’ve got a wealth of tips on both.