I rarely tweet, but I watch a lot of Twitter. If that watching is on the coronavirus pandemic (and how people respond to the work going on to curb it), I can be in turn infuriated, frustrated and despairing.
But Twitter can also be lovely and profoundly moving. Late last night, this thread by Mark R. Miller popped up in my feed. I don’t know the author, and his bio doesn’t give much away, but he tells a story full of humanity. It’s about family and choice and grief and stoicism. His pinned tweet about the remarkable life of a great aunt who died before he was born is also special.
Because of the character limit, people think of Twitter as a lot of terse shouting into a virtual void. But the more I read, the more humanity I see.
My subheading, “be short, be simple, be human”, is from Sir Ernest Gowers, who wrote The Complete Plain Words in 1948 as a guide to the proper use of English for the British Civil Service. His great-granddaughter Rebecca Gowers recently created a new edition of this bestselling book.
Keeping it short, simple and human is a good guide for all that we write, wherever we publish it.