Character limit on Twitter: How it affects your tweet

So we all wanted to write our thoughts on Twitter. But with the character limit there we went. Twitter also realized this and doubled its character length from 140 to 280 characters. But this doubling of character limit on Twitter has not greatly affected the length of Twitter posts. Maybe because people have got used to the brief nature of posts. The facts state that only 12% of tweets are longer than 140 characters, with only 1% of tweets hitting the 280-character limit.

It seems that people still haven’t become used to the room they have to write their thoughts. But one change has been observed i.e. people are using much less abbreviations now. The use of “text speak” such as “u r,” “u8,” “b4” etc. has decreased significantly. People have started to use proper words instead of words like ‘gr8’, ‘sry’ and others. This is an example for english language but Twitter has said that the findings are consistent across the seven languages analyzed.

Also Read: how to pin someone else’s tweet in 2020?

‘Character’ defined:

As mentioned above, characters contained by text content of a single Tweet can be upto 280 characters or Unicode glyphs. In some cases, glyphs can be counted as more than one character which depends on the weight of glyphs.

The current version of the character as defines as the a default two-character weight and four ranges of Unicode code points that are weighted differently. So the code characters are used in the following ways:

• The first range covers characters across the Latin-1 code pages. (U+0000 – U+10FF).
• The second range is general punctuation up to and including the Zero Width Joiner (used to combine emoji and other glyphs) (U+2000-U+200D).
• The third range is general punctuation excluding U+200E and U+200F, which are Unicode directional marks (U+2010-U+201F).
• The final range covers quotation marks (U+2032-U+2037).

We will explain how the character coding works with this table:

Emojis Coding and How it works:

This coding is different as the character coding. Emoji supported by  twemoji  includes emoji which have been modified by Fitzpatrick skin tone or gender modifiers, even if they are composed of significantly more Unicode code points. Emoji weight is defined by a regular expression in twitter-text that looks for sequences of standard emoji combined with one or more Unicode Zero Width Joiners (U+200D). So we will provide you with example of how the emoji coding works on twitter.

Comparing Characters Limit for different languages

It has been a pain to adjust all your thoughts in the character limit prescribed by Twitter. However, this problem is not same for everyone around the globe. As the languages differ, the requirement for characters to express your thought starts varying. For instance, when you tweet in English you can easily reach the word limit and may have to edit down to fit in. But this is not the problem if you’re tweeting in Japanese. There is always room to spare even after sharing all your thoughts. This is because languages like Korean, Japanese and Chinese convey more information in one character as compared to English, French, Spanish and others.

After the increase in Character limit from 140 to 280 to give room to languages who face cramming due to the word limit. The language exceptions for the increase in character limit are as mentioned above, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. This is because of the following finding of Twitter:

Well, Twitter is known for its concise form and getting right to the point without much ado. So many people are attached and become used to 140 words. But this increase in character limit on Twitter is also a necessary step. Everyone should be able to express their feelings/thoughts. And even if only few percentage of people are using this extended limit then also it should be considered a success.

Why Character limit on Twitter is a good thing?

Mostly people are easily distracted and have difficult time focusing on something for long. You can say that they have short attention spans whether its for scrolling through apps or flipping through channels between commercial breaks. So character limit on Twitter is a perfect way to post snackable information without much focus on punctuations and using abbreviations.

1. Higher engagement

Twitter is known for its clear and concise posts. Because of this people can read it easily and share it quickly. There is no need to put your mind in deciphering anything because of the size of information as it is easily digestable. These tidbits of information have made them sharable and more engaging for people. And by adding a hashtag or graphic, you can add more spice to it.

2. Making every word count

Because of the character limit on Twitter, you have to cut down the fuzz and be on point. Twitter makes us write our stories in short and crisp form. There is no room for rambling and errors as there is no time. People should identify their message and deliver it in an effective and efficient way. Also, you can cut down by using abbreviations, hashtags, shorter words. So that you don’t need to sacrifice the meaning.

3. Varying social media strategy

Because of the unique differentiators, every social media platform should be used by the marketers in a way to make the best out of it. You can’t just copy the same advertisement posted on Facebook to Twitter. This is because of the Twitter’s quick-to-post, quick-to-read platform. So to use Twitter to your best advantage, you need to adopt fitting social media strategy.

4. Agility

In this fact pace world, people are usually nimble and quick when reacting to real-time activities. Those days are long past us when social media messages were planned in advance to post. Now everyone churn out contents within seconds of any happenings whether it be memes or other content. These short tweets usually become trending and are reposted by many.

Conclusion on Character limit on Twitter:

Here we talked how Character limit on Twitter limits your tweet. How different character coding takes different spaces in your tweet. And also how much space does an emoji takes and what’s the code for the emoji. And also how Character limit on Twitter is a good thing. Comparison between different languages and how much space each language character takes. Hope you find what you are looking for here. Thank You for the read.