Typography, Twitter, and Trump

I spend my day thinking about typography. Well, maybe not all day—but I do think about it a lot. That is what designers (are supposed to) do. The general public, not so much. But like good editing, and good writing, well-thought-out typography makes everyone’s life a bit nicer and a bit easier. And if copy is easier and friendlier to read, more people are likely to read it. And that is a good thing if you want your copy read—which I am assuming is the goal of most writers.

Which brings me to Twitter. Those short bursts of 140 characters are often cryptic (because, you know, they are short), but, because tweets are short, they are generally easy and fast to read. But what happens with the newly expanded 280-character tweet. As this Washington Post article explains longer is not necessarily better. Or easy to read. And tweets that aren’t easy to read don’t get retweeted. And a non-retweeted tweet is pretty much a wasted tweet.