Writing Tips | Poetry

Make Your Twittle Count

We’re making twittle history

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay

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 👌