I like Twitter but it has it’s limits – namely 140 characters, which is part of it’s appeal. However there are many times when I have wanted to retweet a particularly useful or informative tweet, but was stymied by the character count.

Obviously it’s still not well known in the Twitterverse that if you want the best chance of having your tweet retweeted, you should follow this formula to make sure that it can be:

RT @yourusername + tweet = 140 or less.

Just for an example, I might send this tweet with a fake twitter account – CherrylsHeavyTwitter:

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog. – Dwight Eisenhower

That tweet contains 123 characters. If someone were to retweet it, it would look like this:

RT @cherrylsheavytwitter What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog. – Dwight Eisenhower

Which comes to 148 characters because “RT @cherrylsheavytwitter” = 25 characters.

Phew. Math.

Virgin Tweeters should be required to pass a test before taking the first tweet plunge. Or at least given a link to a page with Twitter commands. But that would detract from the user friendly aspect of Twitter. Or something like that.

As for how to retweet a tweet with too many characters, Technically Personal has a great roundup of five ways to rt a too many word tweet. The comments list even more.