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Final Portfolio
WP1 Revision
Writing 2
The Birth of Tweets
All aspects of life have evolved greatly as time has passed; laws, technology, the cars we
drive, etc. But have you ever thought about the evolution of things shared on social media? Have
you ever wondered how someone came up with the concept of Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter
posts? Take a look at tweets, for example. Tweets are posts made on the social media platform
Twitter. How did tweets come about? What was someone thinking when they thought about the
need for a tweet? How did they come up with the characteristics? Although tweets seem like a
one-of-a-kind, 21st century genre of literature, they are not. Tweets were not concocted from
scratch to become a new genre of literature used for entertainment- they are based off of former
types of writing, but with adaptations to fit our evolving world.
To fully understand how and why tweets are the way they are, we must understand how
tweets apply to a genre. A genre (in regards to literature) is a certain piece of writing that serves
a certain purpose to its readers and has certain characteristics to fulfill that purpose. In Kerry
Dirk’s article, “Navigating Genres”, Dirk explains the confusing topic of what a genre is and
what differentiates them. He states “…knowing what a genre is used for can help people to
accomplish goals, whether that goal be getting a job by knowing how to write a stellar resume,
winning a person’s heart by writing a romantic love letter, or getting into college by writing an
effective personal statement.” (Dirk, Navigating Genres). From this statement in Dirk’s article,
we can see how all pieces of writing have goals- even tweets. Some tweets serve the purpose to
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¶
Was There a Twitter Before 2006?¶
¶
Imagine you just read your local newspaper. Done? Now
imagine checking your twitter account. Did you notice any
similarities? Newspapers have several different articles
within. There’s news reports, a sports section, columns,
editorials, etc. Some articles, although they are both in the
newspaper, are different genres. Some are different genres
because they serve a different purpose to its audience, they
include a different tone, and they include different
information to meet a different goal. Now tweets, there’s not
just one type of tweet: personal accounts can voice their own
sappy, humorous, relatable or trendy tweets. Meanwhile, a
professional account can post an informative and formal
tweet about issues that the public might be interested or
concerned about. These different types of tweets can also be
considered different genres because, once again, they have
different purposes and contain different information to meet
different goals. Why are we looking at tweets and newspaper
articles? Well, there’s a correlation: a newspaper article is an
antecedent genre of a tweet, meaning that tweets evolved
from and are similar to newspaper articles. We are going to
take a look at two genres of tweets common on Twitter:
personal tweets and informational tweets. Then, we are
going to compare them to their antecedent genres. By doing
so, we can see how genres of literature apply to something as
common and short as a tweet, and how genres (like
newspapers) have evolved over time with technological and
social advances. ¶
First, we’re going to evaluate how we can differentiate
between a personal tweet and an informational tweet. Tweets
aren’t labelled “CAUTION: PERSONAL TWEET” or
“THIS TWEET IS OF INFORMATIONAL CONTENT”;
tweets don’t have titles, so we can’t tell what they’re about
until we read them, but each tweet has conventions, or
characteristics, that allow us to categorize them. The
following are conventions for a personal tweet: A personal ... [1]
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make us laugh, some to give a personal encounter, give updates on a sports game, or to inform

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Any piece of writing as short as a tweet and as long as an encyclopedia is considered a

genre- also notice that both have extremely different characteristics (or conventions) to

accomplish their goal. The goal from reading a tweet differs greatly from the goal of reading an

encyclopedia, therefore resulting in different conventions. It could be easy to classify all tweets

on Twitter as one genre, but actually there are a few different genres of tweets. They are different

in both their subjects as well as the conventions used. There are lots of different types of tweets

on Twitter, some tweets serve the purpose to make us laugh, some to give a personal encounter,

or to inform readers on politics, news, or other serious issues- by seeing these different goals, we

can conclude that they are different genres of Tweets. Whether you follow CNN on Twitter to

stay informed on current issues or Emma Chamberlain (a “twitter-famous” teenager) to giggle at

funny phrases, each of their tweets will serve a different purpose and be different in their

composition and conventions.

As an active Twitter-user, I personally enjoy tweets that are relatable and comedic, which

I like to call “personal tweets”. A personal tweet’s sole purpose is for entertainment and to

appeal to its audience on a personal and relatable level. Here are some examples of my favorite

personal tweets:

-“aye bro who tf created math and how we know he right???” (@xvkinggg)

-“Today at chipotle I asked a man ‘what kind of meat for this bowl’ And he responded

‘Do you guys have hot dogs’ And I have not fully recovered” (@Ryblank00)

- “in 2020 we only accept apologies in cash or changed behavior” (@brendonisdead)

As you can see, structurally, the conventions of personal tweets are very laid-back. Lots of
tweets contain spelling, punctuation, and capitalization errors. These “errors” are a convention

because it shows realness within the tweet; it gives it a light-hearted and personal feeling because

it is written in an informal way as if it came straight from the author’s thoughts. Content-wise,

personal tweets can be about personal, trendy, and humorous topics that appeal to the readers’

personal and comedic side. If you scroll through Twitter and look at a lot of peronal tweets, you

will definitely see trends both in content and structural conventions.

Aside from personal tweets, there are tweets on Twitter that serve the purpose of

informing people on local news, world-wide news, political news, etc. These genres of tweets are

what I call “informational tweets” (info-tweets for short). Here are some examples of info-

tweets:

-“Representatives of the dance industry say they’ve seen the processing times for non-

immigrant visas increase from multiple weeks to multiple months, with uncertainty the

application will ultimately be approved…nbcnews.com” (@NBCNews)

-“Trump’s 2020 campaign announces it will no longer credential Bloomberg News

reporters for its events after the outlet said it would not conduct investigations into

Democratic presidential candidates cnn.it/2LhqMSZ” (@cnnbrk)

From the two examples, you can see how the conventions of info-tweets differ greatly from

personal tweets. The punctuation, spelling, and grammar is used in the correct manner. It’s much

longer in length and has more “wordy” sentences. Another common convention is the link

connected at the end of the tweet. This link takes you to a trusted website with more information

on the article. The content of informational tweets is fairly sophisticated and the language used is

formal to fit its “rhetorical situation”. Since info-tweets talk about discuss serious topics

presented with factual evidence, the author must show credibility by using proper writing styles
and formal language- therefore fitting the rhetorical situation. Since personal tweets are about

light-hearted topics and don’t serve the purpose to inform with facts, it fits the rhetorical

situation to have laid back grammatical structure. Whereas an info-tweet wouldn’t fit its

rhetorical situation if it had misspellings while discussing serious topics like our nations’ politics.

By comparing info-tweets and personal tweets, we can see that both are substantially

different in their conventions and content. Personal tweets serve the purpose of entertaining and

relating to readers, while informational tweets are to inform readers about more serious topics

with facts. Because they serve different goals, they can’t be written with the same conventions or

else they wouldn’t be as effective in their goals. The humorous content and laid-back structure of

personal tweets allows readers to connect on a more relatable and light-hearted level.

Meanwhile, the correct use of grammar, punctuation, longer length, and sophisticated language

in info-tweets makes readers more prone to believing the information presented to them.

Now, if you think about personal and informational tweets and their purposes (for

entertainment and for information), are tweets the first genres of writing to be used for these

purposes? Was a personal tweet the first way people were entertained by something in writing?

How did people get political and global news before tweets? Well, genres of literature have

existed for many years that serve the same purpose as info and personal tweets. They are just

written in the formats and platforms appropriate for the time period.

People in the 1980’s needed access to entertainment and news through literature, just as

we do, today. Yet, the people of that era didn’t have the technology to open up the Twitter app

and read a funny tweet that made them chuckle. That doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t have

any form of comedic literature- a big hit in newspapers was comic strips. Comic strips were used

for entertainment in newspapers and appealed to readers’ personal and relatable side through
comedy. The topics of comic strips were different every week. Some comic themes, characters

and titles remained the same but they always had different story lines in each newspaper. Comic

strips also had cartoon drawings attached since the comics themselves weren’t very wordy.

These conventions are fairly different than that of a personal tweet, but the reasons for their

differences are to fit the technology and social changes our world has endured over the years.

As we know, there has been a need for comedic entertainment through literature for many

years, but the way our society and technology has evolved has caused these genres to make

adaptations. People in the 21st century don’t obtain entertainment the same way people in the

1980’s did, nor do we find the same things funny. The invention of smartphones, social media

and how prominent they are in peoples’ lives causes things like comics in newspapers to be

presented in a way that fits the electronic and social media world. Social media and how

information/entertainment is presented differs greatly from newspapers. The ability to have a

personal account and share your funny ideas, thoughts, and opinions with millions of others on

social media is very different than comics on a newspaper. Social media allows for people to

share more personally humorous views and to relate to others on a more personal level than a

newspaper comic strip. Newspapers are very limited in the amount of people they can reach (not

nearly as many as Twitter) and there are also limited things that can be presented. Newspapers

must be particular in the types of comics (or any articles for that matter) because there is a

constant worry of what will appeal to the readers. Whereas with social media, there are so many

people who use it and so many different opinions, it’s normal to share more personal things.

Therefore, with these technological and social changes in mind, we can consider newspaper

comics an “antecedent genre” of personal tweets. Despite the conventional changes to fit

changing times and advancements, the core purposes of both genres are similar, making them
similar genres.
Info-tweets also have an antecedent genre which they have evolved from. Once again,
info-tweets wasn’t the first source of information that people used- people in the 1980s who
didn’t have Twitter were still able to get news on a larger scale than just their local newspapers.
Magazines were used greatly in the eras before info-tweets. There are lots of different types of
magazines that give different information about current world-wide issues. A particular
magazine that I find a correlation and can compare to info-tweets is Time Magazine. Time
includes a lot of political and global issues they find are most important and relevant for its
readers to know. For example, in the latest issue, “The Trump Campaign Has Raised Millions
Off Impeachment — And Facebook Is One of Its Most Powerful Tools” (Brian Bennett and
Chris Wilson) is one of the head-lining articles included in it. This relates a lot to the content of
the examples of info-tweets included previously. Info-tweets and magazine articles both use
proper grammatical structure and formal language to present their information because it
includes facts- both must uphold a professional/academic structure to it in order for it to be taken
seriously. Also, the goals of info-tweets and articles in a magazine like Time are similar- to
inform readers on fairly serious issues pertaining to our world on a larger scale. Only slight
conventional changes differ info-tweets from magazine articles.
As technological and social changes caused comics to adapt, information presented in
magazine articles had to as well. With social media and the convenience of having the world-
wide web in our pockets, people no longer need to subscribe to have magazines sent to them, but
the information needed to adapt for social media. Info-tweets are presented on the social media
platform Twitter. Tweets on Twitter are limited to 280 characters; this keeps the social media
platform flowing with the ability to look at multiple posts as opposed to a few lengthy ones. So,
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tweets, as an experiment I interviewed my grandmother who
has never had a Twitter account and asked her some
questions. To my surprise, she knew more about Twitter than
I expected, and she opened my eyes to the idea that the
concept of Twitter had already existed before the emergence
of the app. I asked if she knew any past pieces of literature
similar to tweets and she suggested newspapers. My
immediate thought was “No way, tweets are way more
personal than a newspaper article”, but if you think about it,
a newspaper is basically a compilation of tweets, just
expressed on paper and in a different format. A specific note
my grandma pointed out was that newspapers do have
opinion columns and “Letter to the Editor” columns where
anyone in the community can send in their opinion to the
editor and it will be published in the paper so others can read
and relate to it- adding some personal content with the same
purpose and concept as a personal tweet. Because of the
similar purpose, we can consider an opinion column/”Letter
to the Editor” column as an antecedent genre of a
tweet. Although personal tweets are shorter and not as
formal as a “Letter to the Editor” column would be, we can
still consider a newspaper article an antecedent genre of
tweets because of the similar purpose. Plus, the differences
between articles and tweets are due to the adaptations to
technological and social advances we have endured since the
newspaper era, not to serve a different purpose. Therefore,
tweets are basically shorter opinion columns shared on a
larger-scale.¶
Magazines can also be considered an antecedent genre of
tweets. For example, there are lots of magazines: Time
Magazine, The Economist, People Magazine, Rolling Stone,
etc. Magazines cover worldwide topics about politics,
discoveries, celebrities, and lots more. The purpose of a
magazine is to inform readers on a particular topic. Isn’t this
similar to the conventions of an informational tweet? Also,
authors from magazines and verified Twitter accounts both
must have some type of qualification to share such
information. Magazines hire writers who acquire information
through first-hand sources and Twitter shows when an
account is verified to prove that information is coming from
a credible source. Although tweets are forced to be shorter
because of the format of the app, they still serve as an
informational source to the audience, are formal like
magazine articles, and are appropriate for its audience; the
sole difference between them is the technology that allows
tweets to spread more quickly and the length/format of
tweets. These similarities between informational tweets and
magazines with their purpose, credibility, and
educational/informative content allow us to identify
magazine articles an antecedent genre of informational
tweets.¶
In conclusion, genres of literature are all around us, even on
Twitter, and continue to evolve and adapt as technology
advances. Although tweets are fairly new in society, their
purpose has been alive for years and years. People have
voiced their opinions in the newspaper for decades- only
technology and Twitter made it easier, faster, and trendy.
People have read up on politics, news, and environmental ... [3]
info-tweets are definitely shorter than magazine articles, but they still contain the general idea of

what’s being presented and gives a link for further information. This conventional difference

helps information adapt to social media because it allows the reader to choose if it’s something

they are interested in; when a Twitter user is scrolling through their feed and sees an info-tweet,

they can choose whether they want to click the link and learn more on a topic or to keep

scrolling. The conventions between magazine articles and info-tweets aren’t much different, but

the differences they do have are to present the information in a way that meshes well with our

social media world.

As you can see, from the comparisons of personal tweets to newspaper comics and from

info-tweets to magazine articles, tweets are basically evolutionary forms of their antecedent

genres. As technology has transformed over the years and how people have adapted to using this

technology, our means of receiving and understanding information/entertainment has changed.

Therefore, the information being presented must change also. Although a personal tweet and a

comic can be seen as two separate entities, they really do accomplish the same goals appropriate

for their time era. The same can be said for info-tweets and magazine articles- the information

and goal to inform is the same between the two, but info-tweets are presented in a way that

appeals to an audience so used to social media. Tweets are not state-of-the-art inventions of the

21st century, but evolved genres of literature to fit our day and age.

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