人们虽然「写」Twitter，但 Twitter 更像是一个口语平台，《经济学人》的一篇评论如是写道：
The answer may lie in their hybrid nature. In form, the language of social media is written—but in style, it is far more like speech. Twitter’s character limit encourages short bursts that resemble talking, and are then threaded together in quasi-conversations. People write them as they speak, using sentence fragments, slang, non-standard spellings (to reflect pronunciation) and so on. Dialectologists use Twitter to study shifts in vocabulary, grammar and usage; research shows that the language of tweets closely mimics oral chatter. Finally, Twitter rewards the same qualities that are prized in speech: spontaneity, personality and wit.