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Hemingway and the Art of Tweets

As a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star, Hemingway was forced to adhere to a stylebook for young reporters, which included the following advice: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English, not forgetting to strive for smoothness." Hemingway later said these were the "best rules I ever learned for the business of writing." Today's Twitter community would agree.

Twitter users channel the Hemingway style each time they compose a tweet. The stark minimalist nature, the grade school-like grammar, the short, declarative sentences. These are all techniques that Hemingway employed in his own writing.

Would Hemingway tweet if he were alive today? If so, what would he write? One can only imagine.

"For sale: Baby shoes, never worn."
 about 1 minute ago from Papa

Posted on February 06, 2010 | Two comments
Great post, I absolutely agree. Hemingway's ruthless editing and love of a "simple declarative sentence" is invaluable for writing anything from tweets to blogs. On a related note, do you think EH would have used tweets like telegrams?

Johnny  |  April 28, 2010
The modern day tweet would be equivalent to the telegram in Hemingway's day and I think he would have used them in the same way.

TrueGen  |  April 29, 2010



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