Twitter ‘a scrolling suicide note of Western civilization’

Also, not everything’s a grammatical error, Beverly Cleary’s thrifty writing style, what writers can learn from Don Draper’s iPhone, and adventures with magazine editors. Here’s the Week in Writing:

The culture of tweeting. This piece from n+1 magazine breaks down the science of tweeting and the attitude of the tweeter, as well as those who decide to stay on the sidelines. To the folks at n+1, Twitter is a “scrolling suicide note of Western civilization.” The piece does a better job than most articles about Twitter at exposing the service for its worst values (self-importance) while simultaneously highlighting its best (democratized expression). According to the writers, Twitter tends “toward the essential but also the superfluous, the concise but also the verbose.” Read the essay here.