When brevity isn’t everything: The Guardian vs Twitter

One of a number of articles in The Guardian about a Whitehall official’s template document advising on Twitter etiquette for government departments:

West Bromwich East MP [Tom Watson] spoke out after a Whitehall official wrote a 20-page strategy paper for government departments on how to use the medium, which has a limit of 140 characters per message.

Even its author, Neil Williams, the head of corporate digital channels at Lord Mandelson’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, admits the 5,382-word official “template” might be regarded as “a bit of over the top”.

Boasting 36,215 characters and spaces, it would need roughly 259 separate “tweets” to be sent via Twitter.

How dreadful that a style and usage guide is long. Who could possibly conceive of such a thing?

Alan Travis and Haroon Siddique’s article is 1,179 words long. The current print edition of Guardian Style, the newspaper’s stylebook, is 362 pages in length.

Just saying.

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2. Brevity is the soul of wit, and the bane of the feature writer
3. Pussy problems, part 2
4. Just Fancy That! Peter Wilby on quality newspaper prices
5. Style guide wars: actress vs female actor

Tagged as: communication, government, hypocrisy, Media, style, The Guardian, Twitter