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Dom Sagolla
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140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form 1st Edition

by Dom Sagolla (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 21 ratings
Make the most of your messages on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites

The advent of Twitter and other social networking sites, as well as the popularity of text messaging, have made short-form communication an everyday reality. But expressing yourself clearly in short bursts-particularly in the 140-character limit of Twitter-takes special writing skill.

In 140 Characters, Twitter co-creator Dom Sagolla covers all the basics of great short-form writing, including the importance of communicating with simplicity, honesty, and humor. For marketers and business owners, social media is an increasingly important avenue for promoting a business-this is the first writing guide specifically dedicated to communicating with the succinctness and clarity that the Internet age demands.

  • Covers basic grammar rules for short-form writing
  • The equivalent of Strunk and White's Elements of Style for today's social media-driven marketing messages
  • Helps you develop your own unique short-form writing style

140 Characters is a much-needed guide to the kind of communication that can make or break a reputation online.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0470556137
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0470556139
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Wiley
  5. Publication date
    October 12, 2009
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    5.45 x 0.5 x 8.47 inches
  8. Print length
    208 pages
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

How to write short and sweet for the Information Age

The advent of Twitter and other social networking sites, along with the ubiquity of text messaging, have made short-form communication and constant contact an everyday reality. Expressing yourself clearly in short bursts—particularly within Twitter's 140 character limit—takes special writing skill.

For marketers and business owners, social media and text messaging have become an increasingly important avenue for promoting a business, but you have to be able to get your message out in just a few words. 140 Characters is the first writing guide specifically dedicated to communicating with customers, colleagues, and contacts with the succinctness and clarity that the times demand.

Twitter User #9 Dom Sagolla teaches the lessons of great short-form writing, including the importance of communicating with simplicity, openness, and humor. What Strunk and White's Elements of Style did for traditional media, 140 Characters does for the social media revolution happening today. Inside, you'll learn all the basics of:

  • Developing your own honest and unique writing style

  • Evolving rules of grammar for the short form

  • Principles of brevity, including tech-speak/leetspeak

  • Avoiding the too-much-information syndrome

  • Mastering the art of the text message

  • Winning techniques for writing poetry, news, fiction, and much more

About the Author

DOM SAGOLLA helped create Twitter with Jack Dorsey and a team of entrepreneurs in San Francisco. He also helped engineer Macromedia Studio, Odeo, and Adobe Creative Suite, and now produces iPhone applications with his company, DollarApp.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wiley; 1st edition (October 12, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0470556137
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0470556139
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 0.5 x 8.47 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 21 ratings

About the author

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Dom Sagolla

Dom Sagolla

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- Twitter Co-creator

- iPhoneDevCamp Co-founder

- DollarApp Founder

Dom Sagolla helped create Twitter while working for Odeo in 2006. He grew up in New England before attending Swarthmore College, where he earned a degree in English Literature in 1996 and created Dom.net. A software engineer in Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, Dom returned to get his Masters in Education from Harvard University in 2000. Since then he has helped build Macromedia Studio, Odeo Studio, the original Twttr, Adobe Creative Suite, and now produces iPhone apps with his company DollarApp in San Francisco.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
21 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Brianna
    5.0 out of 5 stars Useful Book
    Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2022
    Verified Purchase
    This Is Book Was Very Useful .
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  • Roger Yang
    5.0 out of 5 stars Essential guide for the new medium - the Short Form
    Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    This book is not really about what Twitter is or how Twitter impacts our lives. At least not directly. This book is about writing in the Short Form. I see it as more of a writing book than a social media book.

    The 140 character limit can be likened to the restrictions one has while writing various forms of poetry. This limitation transforms the way we communicate (leetspeak, hashtags, @, etc) and forces us alter the very nature of our communications (URL-shorteners, hypertext, etc). The author touches on these various topics, but primarily this book focuses on the CRAFT of writing in the Short Form. It is a style manual. In my reading I have yet to encounter another book that fills this need. Within this 140 character restriction, one can be humorous, ironic, clever, artistic, creative, etc. The author encourages the reader to develop a personal style and treat tweeting as an art form.

    The author does a great job in exposing the reader to the myriad of possibilities in creating a 140 character tweet. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to take their tweeting seriously.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • John M. Ford
    3.0 out of 5 stars A Shallow Look at the Short Form
    Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    Dom Sagolla, one of the inventors and active promoters of Twitter, offers commentary on "the short form"--tweets and other tweet-sized snippets of text that have become the new way to communicate. Hoping to improve my Facebook status messaging skills, and impressed by Dom's web cred, I downloaded the Kindle version within a day of discovering this book's existence.

    The major sections promise to show us how to LEAD, VALUE, MASTER, EVOLVE, and ACCELERATE. The three-layer table of contents supports the book's claim to be a style guide. The depth stops there. By the time the author revealed that he had prepared to write the book by sending brief ideas that occurred to him off to a special Twitter account for later assembly, I was not surprised. Giving lie to the structured outline, the book itself has a snippety, disjointed feel to it. This style works for tweets, but not for a full-length book that ought to contain smooth transitions and thoughtful integration.

    There are some useful take-aways. The book begins with an informative history of Twitter's inception and evolution. Some good thinking went into the 12-stage "cycle of focus and distraction" experienced by Twitter users. There are inclusive lists of various language and text techniques. The book does stress basic writing concepts like simplicity, conciseness and attention to your audience. It warns against lying, rudeness, and naiveté. And it admonishes us with PC sincerity to never, ever post drunk.

    Beyond its choppy presentation, how does it disappoint? By falling short. The author has much to say about style and developing one's voice. But the highest form of style it advocates is offering up a stream of glib one-liners and attracting followers who enjoy them. There is little on style in service of some more substantive message, be it personal, political, commercial or social. Such an expansion of focus would bring depth and utility that the book currently lacks. Too much of the material is standard writing advice, better presented elsewhere and only slightly adapted to the short form.

    And, I am sorry to say it, the author's examples just aren't that clever. Yes, there are some good one-liners. But how do you write short form messages that entertain and invite engagement and response? During the time I spent reading this book, I learned more from the status messages of a few Facebook friends than I took away from the book's extensive collection of tweets past. I believe the author's understandable enthusiasm for the Twitter archive may have influenced his authorial judgment.

    I recommend a quick look through this book at the library to satisfy your curiosity--and perhaps discover that you disagree with me. Then spend more time with something that will really improve your writing, like Susan Bell's The Artful Edit or Marc Kramer and Wendy Call's Telling True Stories. Neither focuses on the short form of writing. But you can use their insights to adapt to it on your own. In this book, the author advises us to "[t]hink of every tweet as an epitaph." Well said. Let this collection of tweets rest in peace.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • Var
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great information!
    Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    I purchased this book for a journalism class where we will be using twitter to communicate with the professor and fellow students. It is very informative and helps me to understand the concept of 140 characters.
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  • Mark Wills
    4.0 out of 5 stars Makes you think, not so much act...
    Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    This book is not so much about tips and tricks, but getting one to think differently (or, pardon the cliche, outside the box) and to be thoughtful relative to "the short form" of online writing. It gave me some great ideas and reinvigorated my interest in social media.
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  • Dave Friedel
    5.0 out of 5 stars Book. Awesome. Buy.
    Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2009
    Verified Purchase
    Clearly explains some simple concepts not only for Twitter, but writing in general. Hemingway's writing style. I get it now. Buy this book.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Mytfine1944
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    WONDERFUL !!
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  • Jeremy Schultz
    1.0 out of 5 stars Good premise, but writing is fragmented
    Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2009
    My full review will be found at [...], but I wanted to write a quick one here as well. I think this book will be a huge hit with Twitter lovers but I found the book to be disappointing.

    * The writing is very fragmented, almost stream-of-consciousness with only a sentence or two devoted to an idea at any one time. I couldn't figure out why this was the case until I read the last page, where Dom explains how he wrote the book fragment by fragment. This may make for good fodder on Twitter but it makes for a fragmented book.
    * I was really looking forward to reading a true "style guide for the short form," because writing on Twitter can be really creative, but few pages were devoted purely to writing style. Chapter 10 constitutes most of it. The rest is a combination of Twitter history, cultivating a following, timing your tweets, and about a hundred other related topics.
    * Sometimes a tweet is placed beside a paragraph, as if it is supporting the point, but it doesn't make sense: "Someone is always there to read and listen. There is always an audience for anything. Never doubt that." ((supporting_tweet))Shut up, or I'll blog you.((/supporting_tweet))
    * The entire book is structured around chapters and sections titled with a single word. Value. Master. Branch. Iterate. They sometimes are terms Dom uses for a particular method or action, but they are not explained very well and confusing. Sometimes the meaning is clear enough but the chapter doesn't match the title. Chapter 17, "Iterate," is a particularly weird example: the first couple paragraphs illustrate the meaning of iterate (which I think is a good process for any kind of improvement) but the rest of the chapter has nothing to do with improving with iteration.

    I do think the book is intriguing, especially in the new field of writing about Twitter, and it's unique in that field. Students of the Twitter medium will probably enjoy it, and regular Twitter users might find something that improves their tweets.
    8 people found this helpful
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