Many of us here at Hammock Inc. have been using Twitter for more than two years now – a couple of us pushing two and a half – and we've learned that Twitter does lots of things. It allows telecommuters to keep in touch with the "home" office; it affords small businesses the opportunity to reach out to potential customers free of charge; it encourages conversation on hundreds of topics at any given moment; it allows news organizations to reach their audience before the 5 p.m. telecast; and so much more. And, it's teaching me to be a better writer.

How, you ask?

Twitter forces you to keep your tweets to 140 characters. Now, I've never thought of myself as long-winded, but it's tough to keep my thoughts concise enough to fit within that constraint. So I have to work at it. I have to always keep the pages flipping in that thesaurus in my mind. Why use a word with 14 letters when a different word with just six will work?

I have to remind myself not to use flowery language, but to stick to the point without the fluff. Short and sweet is key.

Twitter also forces me to proofread, and read again, and read one more time before I hit the post button. I don't want to be the girl who uses "there" when I meant "their." Twitter is conversation in an instant, and you can't take those little mistakes back. Sure, I can delete them from my own page, but if someone has looked at that particular tweet as it was posted, they instantly think I can't spell.

If you haven't joined Twitter yet, I encourage you to do so. Be sure to look me up there too, I'm sure I'll have something short and sweet to say. And I'll do my best to spell each word correctly!