At breakfast on Tuesday, he complains: "It's two weeks into the semester and I still can't find Mr. Strnk."
Megan checks her nails. "Who?"
"Mr. Strnk, in the English department."
"Is he lost?"
"I don't know, I just can't find him. I couldn't find him last semester, either."
"Is he on sabbatical?"
"No. I checked with the English department and they say he's not on leave or anything, but he's never in his office."
"Why don't you just go to one of his lectures?"
"No lectures, only tutorials and advising."
"Why do you want to see him?"
"He's the author of The Elements of Twitter Style, the Amazon best-seller. Do you have a copy?" Roderick pushes a small book across the breakfast table. Megan picks it up and begins to read:
Elementary Principles of Tweet CompositionMegan pauses and ponders what Pride and Prejudice would be like as a series of tweets. She imagines:
(1) Limit tweets to one hundred and forty characters. 'Nuf said.
(2) Make liberal use of letter homophones, such as abbreviations and acronyms. An abbreviation is a shortening of a word, for example "CU" or "CYA" for "see you (see ya)". An acronym, on the other hand, is a subset of abbreviations and are formed from the initial components of a word. Examples of common acronyms include "LOL" for "laugh out loud" or "lots of love" and "BTW" for "by the way". There are also combinations of both, like "CUL8R" for "see you later".
(3) Use punctuation for stress. Periods or exclamation marks may be used repeatedly for emphasis, such as "........" or "!!!!!!!!!!". Grammatical punctuation rules are also relaxed on Twitter. "E-mail" may simply be expressed as "email", and apostrophes can be dropped so that "John's book" becomes "johns book". Examples of capitalizations include "STOP IT", which can convey a stronger emotion of annoyance as opposed to "stop it". Bold, underline and italics are also used to indicate stress.
(4) Use onomatopoeic spellings. One well-known example is "hahaha" to indicate laughter. Onomatopoeic spellings are very language specific. For instance, in Spanish, laughter will be spelt as "jajaja" instead. Deliberate misspellings, such as "sauce" for "source", are also used
Jane Austen @jaustenRoderick interrupts her reverie. "I have to run, but you can borrow the book." Megan barely notices.
Everyone knows that a rich single man needs a wife. #cw #rich_single_men
Mama Bennett @mrsbennettMeanwhile, in the Conservatory, Molly struggles to play Scarbo. It's not going well today.
@Mrbennett have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last? #Netherfieldpark #rentals
Big Daddy Bennett @mrbennett
@mrsbennett No
