How to Twitter a Valentine Limerick

Written by William Clark

Remember 50 States is a song celebrating the USA. Great fun for group singing. Love your country, love its people.

Tweet your Valentine Limerick Verse

It is almost as if Twitter was designed for limericks, and limericks for valentine writers. The 140 characters maximum that you are allowed, and that includes punctuation and spaces, is very close to the average for this well-known poetry form so it is ideal for St Valentine's Day verses.

Twittering a limerick poem to your eagerly awaiting followers or valentine is extremely easy, but what if your masterpiece is a few characters on the obese side of the limit? No poet, if you can dignify limerick writers with that title, likes to see their artistic creation chopped off short like the Ugly Sister's toes.

So what do you do if you have a hot limerick that is too big for Twitter's boots? It is time to get on the thinking cap and "tweak the tweet".

Example limerick for a Valentine Card

There's something I really must tweet:
My true love is terribly sweet!
She's sugar and spice
And everything nice,
To kiss her's a wonderful treat!

This limerick's character count weighs in at 146, so how do we lose the extra 6?

The noun "something" could be changed to "one thing". This sounds right and saves a letter but needs a space so it is no good, remember -- spaces count as characters. In line two the adverb "terribly" can be changed to "awfully" without detriment to the scansion or sense.

Hurray! That's one away! Now the excess is only 5.

As informality is OK in a limerick, line three's "and" can be changed to "'n" for a saving of 1, leaving 4 to go.

Line four's "everything" contains an extra syllable as far as standard limerick scansion is concerned, and could be eliminated with an apostrophe "ev'rything" as this is how you would pronounce it, but this does not save us any characters. Blast!

But hold on, we can change it to "ever so" at a whopping saving of 3 characters, leaving only 1 to lose.

The last line works really well and it would be a pity to change it. When all else fails it is possible to remove the punctuation as the lines usually indicate the pauses anyway. Here you can remove the elision apostrophe, as the meaning of "and" is clear without it; and there we are: 140 characters.

A slimline, sleek limerick with a figure to get Twitter lovers wolf whistling in appreciation.

There's something I really must tweet:
My true love is awfully sweet!
She's sugar n spice
And ever so nice,
To kiss her's a wonderful treat!

Hallmark Cards Competition 2011. Now Finished

If you are entering the Hallmark Cards competition you are allowed to use "text speak" and this should enable U 2 manage if necessary.

So now you know how to Twitter a limerick to your valentine -- all you need is inspiration.

NOW incorporated in the paperback: How to write Lyrical Limericks & Poems That Pay
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The secrets of success in writing verse that serves a purpose.

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