Business Writing and Twitter: Is Writing Style Changing for the Better?

In a post not too long ago, I discussed Twitter and how I feel social media outlets such as Twitter is changing the way we communicate and write, and not for the better. I have changed my hypothesis and admit I was wrong. Allow me to explain. Twitter—for better or worse—limits the amount characters one types. While at face value, this method of writing seems limiting—no pun intended—and forces the writer to use improper grammar, spelling, and sentence structure to convey even the simplest of ideas.

What we learned in school, and even more so for individuals with advanced degrees is to write creatively, much like a novelist. The more education one has, the more writing is required. While technical degrees do not allow creative writing, they do require a tremendous amount redundancy, specifically when stating findings or clarifying a problem or purpose statement: business writing only reinforces this concept. The longer the proposal, the better the service, project, or company must be. Of course, this is completely false, but since we have been taught this from early on, we accept it to be truth.

To me, the true mark of intelligence is being able to take a complex system or problem, breaking it down into smaller, more manageable pieces, and expressing ones perspective in as few of words as possible and in a manner and method which most can understand: this is not what we were taught, so this is not what we practice or expect from others.

Simplicity is an art form, not just a way of life or design method. Many things can be simple, and many things can be simplified; writing is no different.

This leads me to restate my assumptions, Twitter is not the death of proper writing after all, rather it forces one to be not only creative with formulating ideas and thoughts, but be succinct. Long diatribes and unnecessary discourse is not only a waste of the authors’ time, but also a waste of the readers’ time. Of course, I could continue with how we were taught improper reading techniques in school, but I will keep that for a different article.

In fact, I performed a little social experiment of my own, and communicated only using Twitter for a week. The two major advantages of this are, (1) the limitation of characters one can use, and (2) the receiver only checks the messages periodically, ergo removing the distraction of always having messages popping up. I found that not only was I more productive, but I limited my communication to the absolute minimum.

Business writers take notice, shorten your proposals, shorten your website text, shorten your emails, shorten everything and keep things to a bare minimum. Do the unexpected and stop living in the proverbial box.

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