Dear Twitter User

Hi, how are you?

Thanks for mentioning me in your tweet. You probably did not intend to. You see, Twitter has some conventions that may have tripped you up.

When you are at a location or with a person, say someplace or someone you refer to as “sterling”, you may want to state “@ sterling”. Notice the space? Without it you are just mentioning me and I see that in my feed. It happens quite a bit.

You may be looking for tween heartthrob Sterling Knight. I am not him. While the confessions of love are sweet, I am probably quite a bit too old for you. It just wouldn’t work. He can be found at @SterlingKnight I believe.

Do not put a space in someone’s Twitter handle. That seems to trip quite a few people up as well. If your friend is @sterlingjones on Twitter mentioning them as “@sterling jones” doesn’t work. You guessed it, your tweet ends up as a mention to me.

Just mentioning your friend’s name and putting the “@” in front of it doesn’t help them see your tweet. I do though. They need a Twitter account for @ replies to work.