Have you ever struggled to make a verse into a useable hashtag on various social sites? There are many rules about how to make a working hashtag, and these rules prevent many verses from becoming hashtags.
Popular sites like Twitter have worked around some of these rules, but others still struggle with hashtags that break the rules. If you don’t format a hashtag correctly, these social search engines will just throw it out.
Three key rules:
- Hashtags can’t begin with a number.
- There are no special characters allowed.
- Hashtags need to be short
The first two rules make using a bible verse as a hashtag very difficult!
How would you make 1 Cor 13:1 as a hashtag?
Hashtags cannot begin with a number, so “#1cor…” is out because it starts with a “1.” How do you separate the verse from the chapter? Do you type 131? How is the rest of the world supposed to know if you meant chapter 1 verse 13 or chapter 13 verse 1? You cannot use any special characters, such as an underscore or a dash, because that will not be compatible with some sites.
Touchbible.net is attempting to solve this problem and welcomes you to join the efforts to make bible verses welcome on social media as hashtags. There are two methods.
Method 1: Write the hashtag as you would say it aloud. 1 Cor 13:1 becomes… #FirstCorinthians13verse1
Method 2: Write the hashtag with abbreviated words. 1 Cor 13:1 becomes… #OneCo13v1
Method 1 is easier to remember and more obvious to the meaning, however it’s longer. If you need a shorter hashtag, use method 2, and try to remember most abbreviations is just the first three letters of the book (except you do not use the number, you have write out the number).
Head over to Touchbible.net and you’ll see the hashtags at the bottom of every page. When you click on the verse numbers, you’ll see the hashtags in the popup share window as well.
Also, follow Touchbible on Facebook. There is a daily bible verse scheduled to be published ever morning. In honor of hashtags, it’s called #TodaysVerse. Start the day off right with a verse in your Facebook feed!