So many tweets with interesting stuff but no way to follow up save going and reading all their tweets (if its interesting enough, I will…but a quick url shortened link would be a much quicker entry to the originating content that spurred the tweet.  This tweet from UMR brought this concern to mind.

RT @rmgrussell UM bishops are recommending severe “interventions” to overhaul the church structure. It simply cannot survive the status quo.

So a quick look at the tweeter (UMR’s Robin Russell) reveals this tweet that went up just after the above tweet:

A bit more on the bishops’ Call to Action: http://bit.ly/3nzgjp

OK.  Robin gives us the source for her tweet…..but I went after the source myself.   What I will usually do,  in order to include my link source is to use as many well known abbreviations as I can to make room for the shortened link.

the first retweet has this:  RT @rmgrussell: United Methodist bishops are recommending severe “interventions” to overhaul the church structure. It simply cannot survive the status quo.

First, use UMBishops,  making room for 15 more chars

RT @rmgrussell: UMbishops recmnd severe interventions 2 overh’l ch’ structure. It simply can’t survive the status quo. http://bit.ly/3nzgjp

So now a retweet of the source comes in 1 char under the 140 limit. The difficulty is well illustrated here…..they went on to split up the tweet into 2,  which may well be more economical when all is said and done,  but is the expectation that the reader will go look up the source tweet not all that realistic?   This ended up NOT being a great example,  since UMR went on and added a second tweet as I was composing this blog post  (which is what often end up doing if I find it too hard to shorten so that it fits…..but all this also put into my head the need  for some notation for a paraphrase of a quote