Contractions: take two words and combine them into one word. For instance "it is" becomes "it’s", or "can not" becomes "can’t". Remember this is not English class, so feel free to drop the apostrophe (i.e. cant, its). Don’t use "and": The word "and" can always become "&" or "+". That gives you two more characters to use. Words you don’t need: Drop words such as "the", "an", and other similar words. Remember License Plates: Write your tweets like you were writing a creative license plate: URGR8! Numbered your Words: related to the above example, you can use numbers and place of words. For becomes "4", "to" becomes "2", and so on. Remove spaces: be sure to take out any extra spaces that are necessary, as these are counted as part of your 140 characters.