We describe an equivalence between the notion of balanced twisted curve introduced by Abramovich and Vistoli, and a new notion of log twisted curve, which is a nodal curve equipped with some logarithmic data in the sense of Fontaine and Illusie. As applications of this equivalence, we construct a universal balanced twisted curve, prove that a balanced twisted curve over a general base scheme admits étale locally on the base a finite flat cover by a scheme, and also give a new construction of the moduli space of stable maps into a Deligne–Mumford stack and a new proof that it is bounded.