Twitter Tip – Ellipsis

Here is a quick Twitter tip for you. Having that 140 character limit in Twitter makes every character important. Often people will have the first few words from a site that they are linking to followed by ellipsis. An ellipsis is usually indicating that there is more to be read. Usually, it is a set of three dots. Most of the time when I see them used in Twitter they are three periods, like this…

However, there is a better way. Every computer, iPhone, iPod Touch, and I’m guessing other smart phones can create an ellipsis. What is the advantage to this? Three periods take up three characters, an ellipsis only takes one. That may not sound like much, but when you are squeezing text and links into 140 characters it can make a difference.

The key command is pretty simple:
Mac OS: option + ; (that is holding down the “option” key and pressing the semicolon)
Windows: ALT + 0133
iPhone: press and hold the “.?123” button. That will change the keyboard to the numbers and punctuation. While still holding down that button move your finger to the period (.) (IMPORTANT: don’t lift your finger from the screen for this trick to work.). Keep holding your finger over the (.) button, and it will change so that it shows the period and next to it the ellipsis. Move your finger to the ellipsis, now lift your finger. The ellipsis will now be in your text.
G1: Shift + Alt + Period (Thank you Heather for telling me about that one!)

I don’t know if the other smart phones have a similar option. I’m guessing that they do. If one of you knows, please let me know, and I will add that to this tip.

Here is a good blog post about what an ellipsis is: http://www.canistercreative.com/newsletter/april_09/dotdotdot.html

I hope you found this helpful.

Thanks for visiting my blog.