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twitter-format(7) -- syntax and conventions used in Twitter statuses

SYNOPSIS

message
@user message

.@user message
RT @user message
MT @user message
OH: quote
#hashtag
$ticker
message ^signed

DESCRIPTION

Twitter supports simple messages as sequences of characters. In addition to the syntax for replying to a tweet poster, there are various conventions for non-reply messages.

PLAIN TWEETS

message

The core message is a string of characters which does not begin with @.

There are additional conventions within a message itself. See the section on [MESSAGE CONVENTIONS][].

@-REPLIES

@user message

If message is preceded with @user, the tweet will be visible to the user with account name user and any users who are following both you (as the sender) and user.

MENTION-REPLY

.@user message

If the leading @ is preceded by any other character, commonly ., the message is no longer an @reply tweet and will be visible to anyone following you (as the sender).

This convention is frequently used to reply to user's tweet while making your reply visible to others, or to refer to user in a "new" tweet without causing its contents to become invisible to your follows.

RETWEETING

RT @user message

If @ is preceded by RT, this is a convention indicating that you are retweeting someone's message. Doing so makes message available to all your followers.

MT @user message

MT, for modified tweet, is used when the message would have exceeded the character limit. This is usually seen in combination with some added comment, otherwise a simple retweet would suffice.

OVERHEARD SENTENCES

OH: quote
OH @user: quote

If message begins with OH:, then what follows is a quote (which may or may not be wrapped in actual quotation marks) which has been OverHeard.

Sometimes the user is included, such as:

OH @user: quote

This means, of course, that user was overheard saying quote.

SIGNATURES

message ^signed

Sometimes a message ends with a ^signature, indicating which user wrote the tweet. This is used to differentiate between many users on a shared account, most often company accounts.

MESSAGE CONVENTIONS

@usermention

message can itself contain @user references, called mentions, which user can see.

#hashtag

Any words in message which begin with # are called hashtags and are used to tag the message as related to some particular topic.

$ticker

Similar to a hashtags, $ is used to refer to stock ticker symbols, such as **$**AAPL for Apple, Inc.

EXAMPLES

  • Simple message: I'm on twitter!

  • Reply: @twitter agreed.

  • Overheard: OH: "140 characters? That'll never take off."

  • Overheard with a user mention: OH @typed: "A man page? For Twitter? That's stupid."

  • Retweet: RT @jack just setting up my twttr

  • Hashtag: Writing a man page for tweets. #pointless

  • Modified tweet: Not bad! MT @typed man page updated.

  • Signed tweet: We'll take a look at that for you. ^JS

  • Stock ticker: Whoa, $AAPL just rallied!

ABOUT THIS MAN PAGE

This twitter-format(7) man page was written for fun by Adam Prescott. You can find its source on GitHub.

It is released under the terms of the MIT License with the copyright notice:

Copyright (c) 2012-2013 Adam Prescott <[email protected]>