# Retweet notation

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2009-04-30T17:07:50Z
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.31859/20090430.1707

I've been wondering what the proper notation for my comments when retweeting was.

I'd been using either:RT @foo blah blah (me: foobar)orRT @foo blah blah | foobar

The first seems to be excessive in terms of characters and the second is ambiguous unless there was some sort of convention.

I Just twittered:Have we decided on the proper notation for commenting on a retweet?

And got the following responses so far:

 j0anna: @Joi I prefer it appended at the end, rather than the beginning! Distracts from the content at the beginning, gives credit where due at end!

kevinmarks: » @Joi: Have we decided on the proper notation for commenting on a retweet? « I use these French quote marks, but that's just me

danlatorre: @Joi clearer to [comment] RT [tweet] than RT [tweet] | [comment], which is confusing. Use the "RT" as the demarcation, saves chars.

manukumar: I like comments before the re-tweet. Like this :) RT @Joi: Have we decided on the proper notation for commenting on a retweet?

Ed: @Joi I/We have used {} since the beginning.

JoshAuerbach: @Joi I think it's clearest when the commentary precedes the RT notation. Otherwise, I go with "Me: ..." in parentheses.

builtbydave: @Joi "commenting on a RT", is that commenting on content of RT, or commenting to someone's RT (e.g or the original author)? 

EthanZ: Microformat development in 140 chars or less | @Joi Have we decided on the proper notation for commenting on a retweet?

andresb: @Joi I use an old IRC convention: 

kenbrush: @Joi said: Have we decided on the proper notation for commenting on a retweet? -- I like the said/-- notation I employ here

Ed: @Joi However, oft the purist opinion, comes from the original. @Jack suggest "retweeted quote"- @Username | editorial in {} behind that

Jakewk: @kwerb @joi I (and others) use "

Clearly we don't have a consensus. I should have used a hashtag so we can follow this more easily on Twitter. How about #rtnotation? (I probably should have linked to the actual tweets instead of twitter ID's but I need to get this posted before people twitter even more..)

BTW: This was about 20 minutes of twitter I think...