twitter-format - syntax and conventions used in Twitter statuses
message
@user message
.@user message
RT @user message
MT @user message
OH: quote
#hashtag
$ticker
message ^signed
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.
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.
@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.
.@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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
I'm on twitter!
@twitter agreed.
OH: "140 characters? That'll never take off."
OH @typed: "A man page? For Twitter? That's stupid."
RT @jack just setting up my twttr
Writing a man page for tweets. #pointless
Not bad! MT @typed man page updated.
We'll take a look at that for you. ^JS
Whoa, $AAPL just rallied!
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 <adam@aprescott.com>