TLDR is a pragmatic device; it's a written discourse marker. Calling it "unnecessary" is just like saying that "well...", "y'know", "so...", "like" and all those other little "filler words" that your high school English teacher doesn't like are "unnecessary". In formal prose, where all that's supposed to matter is textual semantics, sure, they're not necessary, and I wouldn't use them there. But in informal discourse, they're essential; not for conveying propositional information, but for negotiating social discourse information.
The "TLDR" is all-caps, so it grabs your eye out of the wall-o-text that you may be skimming over, and says "hey here is my basic point". And maybe then you'll go "hey that's an interesting point" and scroll back up and read their lengthy argument, story, or whatever, in all its labrynthine discoursiveness.
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TL;DR: One sentence with a block of all-caps beginning it sure catches your eye at the end of a long post.
That was completely unnerving. Without even realising I had done it I completely skipped over the block of text to the TL;DR and only after did I realise it was just Lorem Ipsum nonsense.
I totally agree with TL;DR usage, it's a modern device for modern internet communication. People continue to use it because it's useful and works, not because they have an agenda to ruin the english language or are semi-illiterate. Possibly my favourite thing about it though is its lack of pronounceability. Its entirely invented and used as a written construct and is actually quite cumbersome to try to say out loud.
Interesting tangent, as someone who was fluent in Latin many moons ago (could speak it at an English conversational pace), I literally had to force myself to ignore your filler (which includes several Latin fragments).
It's from a "Hipster Ipsum" generator. Designers traditionally use a piece of malformed Latin to indicate "there is some text here" without having actual text.
What if TL;DR is not in all-caps, e.g. tl;dr? The lowercase version is quite prevalent on Reddit. Of course it still stands out from a block of standard English prose because of the odd shape of the combination (especially the semicolon in the middle), but not so much as the all-caps version.
I don't think this is generally true. The purpose of long form writing is to make the reader draw a conclusion that they may not agree with at the beginning of the article. Studies have shown that once we form a conclusion, we're much less likely to change our minds, so if an article lead with a controversial point we'd internally say "no!" and stick to it rather than letting the article make its point. By not knowing exactly what an article is arguing, we're more receptive to things that could go against our intuition.
I do agree that TL;DRs can be elided for articles that simply state facts or uncontroversial ideas.
That's both a very narrow, unhealthy view of writing and a pretty fatalistic attitude towards your readers. I don't like TL;DR any more than the author of the article, but I don't think having an abstract or brief synopsis decreases the likelihood of you "winning" the essay—or if it did, that this alone would constitute a good reason not to use them.
I think you misunderstood my comment. I wasn't speaking just about having a TL;DR or not but instead more about the difference between long essays and short passages.
Characterizing my opinion of writing as either something you 'win' or 'lose' is itself narrow (and frankly, almost insulting). I have to feel that you coming off this way is a byproduct of the Internet. I'm not trying to chastise you here. I understand that what I wrote initially might come off in a way I didn't intend, but you have to meet me halfway by assuming I'm not a total jerk.
Writing isn't about winning or losing, it's about sharing ideas. And yes, there are better ways and worse ways to share ideas. A conversation around a dinner table is probably better than an essay ever will be - but you can still try to get there. You can either hear this fact and say "aha, I should try to be more clear in sharing my ideas" or you can say "that's fatalistic, and writing isn't a game." I can't fault you for choosing the latter, but I do ask that when I choose the former you remember that I do it just because I want to be understood.
Please accept my apologies. Lately it has felt like everyone around here is trying to win. I should not have assumed you were and I seem to have fixated on the wrong elements of your comment.
Agreed. Aside from assisting in removing bias from the reader, working your way through to the conclusion allows it to remain a mystery to the reader, allowing them to enjoy being walked through the process of discovery, rather than just giving them an answer, then doing a "here's how we got there", which (in some cases) becomes less interesting once the answer is known.
To respond to Fusiongyro's point that this is a narrow view I point out that generally in writing style should change with context. In some cases the author of the article is exactly right about summing things up in the first sentence, in others johnfn is.
TLDR: Whether to use tldr depends on what experience you're looking to give your readers, what you're writing about, and who you're writing for.
You and the GP are actually in agreement with the thesis of TFA (though not the specific argument it's making). TL;DR is unnecessary for two reasons:
1. If you're writing a piece in which "the journey" isn't important, then you should put your conclusions up front like a good journalist.
2. If you're writing a considered, long-form piece in which readers' appreciation of your conclusions is path dependent then a TL;DR is obviously counterproductive - if it's necnessary for a reader to actually read the piece, it doesn't make sense to reward those who skip to the end or didn't comprehend what they read.
TFA took point 1, you and GP took point 2. Nobody (except Charlesmigli) has given an argument that TL;DRs have a place.
I see the tl;dr as a failover to the full story. Those who have time you walk through the journey of discovery. Those who don't you'd rather they could at least see a summary of your conclusion than leave with nothing.
The US military frequently uses the abbreviation "BLUF" (Bottom Line Up Front) for the same purpose as TLDR at the beginning of an email. It's not like the idea of tldr is some perversion born of the Internet.
One of my favorite pieces on writing is "Effective Writing for Army Leaders," available at http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/p600_67.pdf . They have hilarious side-by-side comparisons of poor and good writing, such as pg. 13 and 14 (pg. 7 and 8 by page number). I found this during a brevity kick I had after reading David Sirlin's "Writing Well."
That's pretty awesome! Although I think the elements of the "poor" example that draw attention to some potentially pertinent information shouldn't have been removed. (For example, the fact that the applicant is not mission-essential during a training cycle, and that given he has not previous cold-weather injuries, he may be less susceptible to them.)
A TLDR already has a name, a "summary". Not only a mere extra 4 characters, it's not an acronym for a phrase but a word that says what it is. Amazing, really.
The biggest problem I find with TLDR is that people that use it do so incorrectly. You don't put your summary at the end of the article. You put it at the beginning.
I also find many writers who use TLDR explicitly are rather poor writers. Lots of spelling and grammar mistakes, and the inability to make concise, cogent points. And not knowing what cogent means.
That biggest problem you find is your own creation- it is a result of assuming that "TLDR" is the same as "summary". While it may have the same literal meaning, clearly it is not the same as "summary", because you find it to be used differently. This is because it has a different purpose in discourse. Most synonym pairs are like this; you think they have the same meaning, until you do a corpus analysis and discover that they're used totally differently in practice. Truly perfect synonyms are extremely rare.
Often when I begin writing a comment the ideas I want to get across are only half-formed. Once I've written out a bunch of text exploring an issue I often hit themes and conclusions that weren't clear to me before I started typing.
It seems bad to admit this, but I'm either too lazy to go back and rewrite or I just don't care enough about the audience to give them a well-formed read. Occasionally I think I'd feel "dirty" going back and putting the conclusion at the top, as though I'd be pretending that the insight came to me fully-formed, that my stream of consciousness just happened to dispense a perfect micro-essay on the topic.
That said, many of the best comments I read are "well-composed", and the posts made without relfection or consideration probably contribute to the decline in tone.
Let's face it, if you add a TLDR, your summaries probably don't need to have that much detail, I doubt you are targeting the kind of audience that needs that much detail (or patience)
From a UI/UX perspective: "TL;DR" improves scannability.
As a reader, prefacing that first line/paragraph with "TL;DR" means that all I'll have to read is just that part. This is useful because not everyone uses their first paragraph or sentence to outline the general idea of the article. For example, there might be an anecdote, or a quote, or whatever else to start the article.
It's pretty poor UI/UX compared to what we used to use: long subtitles and abstracts set out in separate fonts at the beginning of documents. It's an improvement on a wall of text, but it's not an improvement on traditional writing styles so much as an improvement on slightly older internet writing styles.
TLDR mostly shows up in places like Reddit. The communication that happens on Reddit is unlike anything we've ever had, millions of people all gathering to casually talk with each other. There is no expectation of depth (anymore, anyway), nor do people put much stock in Reddit comments. Thus TLDR helps people's ideas get across and also probably improves readership of comments (people read the TLDR, and then realize they should go back and read the whole thing). It's a new construct that has evolved for a new form of communication.
There is in some subreddits. Not the big ones, but that's the point of having subreddits, isn't it?
Any time you want to generalize about all of Reddit, think of New York City: "There's no expectation of depth in New York City" just sounds wrong, doesn't it?
I agree in principle, but I feel like the author might be missing the point; the reason "tldr" is used is because it has evolved as an efficient speech marker.
If you think about forum posting as a medium, then a "tldr" makes sense -- generally, you scroll down a list of messages. When you encounter a wall of text, you can either start reading (to see if you'll want to read the rest), or keep scrolling past until your eyes reach the "tldr" symbol, which draws you to the main "point" of the post without requiring you to mentally invest in reading the whole first paragraph.
I don't agree with the Douglas's interpreting an author's own writing of a TL;DR as answering the question of whether the author himself read it -- rather, it is pre-empting the question that might be asked by readers.
While it is true that it is entirely possible (and common practice) to provide the content of a TL;DR in the first sentence, it might not always be there. The reader can only know if the first sentence was a summary by first reading it (see the Halting Problem).
TL;DR is an elegant solution to this problem because it only requires five (minimally four) characters to be read to identify the summarizing statement, and then consume its content. And with the immense amount of content begging for my attention on the Internet, I for one appreciate being able to quickly determine if reading the article in question is something I will likely want to do.
I disagree. While something that is well written shouldn't need a tldr, it does service as a device for people who consume a lot of text. Its a standard shorthand indicating the author did in fact write a summary
Agreed. Plus, people are trained to ignore "wall of text" but will indeed read text labeled as tldr. It's communicating a summary. Due to the mixed bag of good writing on the Internet, we as readers cannot rely on the first sentence being an all encompassing summarization of the points.
I agree but edw519 is a smart guy and I would give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he attempted to capture the essence of a "tl;dr" comment: short, vaguely corresponding to the material, and ultimately misleading.
I find this a pretty weak argument against the tl;dr. "tl;dr" has become a noun, that means one-line / extremely short summary. Language sometimes grows like that.
A better argument against the tl;dr would be that the piece you're writing it for becomes redundant, provided it's an accurate tl;dr. The term tl;dr wouldn't be needed then, because the tl;dr itself becomes your piece.
If it isn't an accurate tl;dr, there's no reason for providing it in the first place, except maybe for giving a rough idea of what your piece is about. OP rightly points out, though, that conventions already exist for just that. A descriptive title or an introduction clearly distinguishable from the rest of your piece, for example.
If you really need a TL;DR, you failed to fulfill your promise to the reader. Writing should be concise, accurate, and to the point, and we as writers should always strive live by the wisdom of Strunk: "Use less words."
When someone opens your webpage, they are entering into an implied agreement with you. They are seeking information and you are supplying it to them. If they are unwilling to uphold their end of the bargain by demanding a TL;DR from me without giving me the chance to read my words, I don't feel any obligation to satisfy them.
The other half of this implied bargain is that I simply offer what they came to find, and if I fail them in that regard, then I should be required to post a TL;DR because all 2000 to 3000 words I blathered out should be in 50 words or less. If I was able to offer a 50-word summary, then I would have simply tacked on an extra 25 words and eschewed the TL;DR.
If you don't like my attitude, that is fine. You probably aren't my target audience, and this is fine. The World Wide Web is a very large place.
'A reader of "The Elements of Style" once sent E. B. White a clipping of a book review that misquoted William Strunk as having advised writers to "Use less words!" White wrote back: "I often wish Strunk could come alive so that I might hear the gnashing of his teeth."'
> Writing should be concise, accurate, and to the point, and we as writers should always strive live by the wisdom of Strunk: "Use less words."
I think the feeling is often "I made this so long because I did not have time to make it shorter."
Of course on the web, this is short-sighted and self-defeating. If you have a valuable thought that you commit to the web, you do so in the hopes that it will be read many, many times. You only have to write it once.
So to agree with dizzystar, respect your (potential) readers and spend a little more time making that thought concise.
It is short-sighted and self-defeating because there is nothing written in stone that says that your content is immutable.
I love it when I receive emails from readers asking me to clarify some point, or telling me about spelling errors. I also get requests to remove paragraphs. After about 5 minutes of pondering it, I find that they are usually right. It's not that difficult to delete a paragraph.
But how does the reader know you are one of the authors that summarise succinctly at the beginning of every article? Especially as they reader may read many articles of differing quality a day. tl;dr to me, is like statically typed English, it improves readability if you know to look for it.
Yup, composition on the Internet is different from composition for print in which "good writing" used to mean 1) intro, 2) body, 3) conclusion. Now it means: "get to teh point!!!" and maybe, if you have time, elaborate so people can follow your train of thought. When people are used to affording only 140 characters of attention, you wind up skipping all the formalities. TL;DR is a sigil. Sometimes people put it at the bottom (jerks), but at least it's easy to spot.
TLDR is just a warning to the reader that the rest of the text might not be worth his time. It also helps to make explicit that the paragraph following it is a summary of the post.
It's the same basic principle as newspaper articles, or the essay format you were taught in school: summary first, details later. Or make your points up front, then prove them.
That only solves a part of the problem, though. Highly upvoted long comments on Reddit are particularly frustrating because so many of them have content that's weak or just plain wrong. I'm convinced that only a small fraction of voters actually read them.
There is also a strong bias toward upvoting more visible content. Higher-voted comments appear first on the page, getting more exposure. For that reason I’ve made it a habit to read comments in bottom-to-top order, in order to artificially make my votes more fair.
TL;DR is for people who forget "statement, explanation, example". Usually, they write some poorly formed paragraph and put a "TL;DR" at the end. Often, that TL;DR is simply the "statement" part of the paragraph that should have been at the very beginning anyway.
Yes, tl;dr (too long; didn't read) was originally used on the somethingawful forums as a dismissive reply to a long wall of text post. Eventually, an OP would preemptively include a TL;DR line in a post to give a warning/summary.
I know I saw it on the SA forums, where it may have originated. People would reply "too long; didn't read" to dismiss a post, which eventually was abbreviated to just "tl;dr". Anticipating this reply, authors of long posts would end their post with a "tl;dr" summary.
TL;DR, summary, critical précis, abstract, thesis statement, inverted pyramid and similar rapid summation styles are both useful and have a long tradition.
TL;DR is an inherent criticism of writing that lacks sufficient discernable coherent structure to rapidly assimilate meaning, whether by want of language, typography, or simply cogent thought. There's a lot of sloppy writing on the Internet (and off).
TL;DR is a recognizable convention that serves a purpose. It can be tagged on by others (the way I first saw it used), or be added by the original author, usually in self-deprecating jest, with the meaning of "do you find this too long to read, here's my summary" . Better if people would write clearly in the first place. Surely that's a simple technical problem, no?
TL;DR: Essay misses origins, benefits, and use-conventions of this hack.
TL;DR is, however, remarkably ineffective when it happens to begin every paragraph of an essay. Please avoid this use case.
This post is poorly argued in my opinion. The author fails to provide an example of the "tools to summarize and communicate your thoughts" which he speaks of. As a result, the specifics of his argument are left to conjecture of the readers, producing an unfocused discussion.
My take on 'TLDR'. It isn't typically equivalent to a well structured opening paragraph. As others have mentioned, it's more akin to an abstract, as used in academic writing.
It denotes that the author will most likely use brief text to summarise and, for the sake of efficiency, it may be in a completely different writing style to the rest of the text.
TLDR is a useful tool for allowing readers to make a rapid decision as to whether the following content is relevant to them. In some ways I see it as a courtesy to the reader.
I think this a great point. If you're in the habit of writing a TLDR for articles, maybe you can try writing the TLDR and then afterwards removing the 4 letters "TLDR" and leaving the sentence there. It's great to summarize in the first sentence.
TL;DR is not merely about summarizing. It's a way, especially in the Reddit community, to add something extra. TL;DR can be a summary, but it can also be a tool for sarcasm, smugness, or getting a certain tone across. Sure you can summarize yourself in the opening line, but you can also make a calculated choice to use TL;DR for some other motive. I often find TL;DR to be a cynical view of your readership because it's as if you're stating, "I know what I wrote is long, and you readers aren't taking the time my writing deserves! So I'm just going to put this summary at the end to shut you up."
TL;DR is a useful convention for busy readers, but it should be at the beginning, not the end.
Look at the lede (the first sentence or two) of any article in any newspaper. It's marked in bold face, and summarizes the whole story. It helps the busy reader decide if he wants to "drill down" by reading the rest of the article. TL;DR could do the same thing, if only people put it at the beginning.
I teach essay writing, so I have strong views about this. ;)
You know, I think you're on to something here, but I believe that on forums such as reddit, the tl;dr is usually read first anyways. People seem to skip to the bottom of a long post to see what the conclusion is.
This is a bit ridiculous. Moving the summary to the beginning is no better. Simply write more concisely and elegantly.
My favorite illustration of this was in the movie "A River Runs Through It"—a young Norman brought his essays to his father, who would say always "Good. Now make it half as long." This was repeated a few times, then it was good enough. Would that more writers could follow this mantra.
As a cofounder of http://tldr.io I'd say that having a tl;dr separated from the main article is very useful for readability. Like ps for example it helps structure the text. tl;dr version of articles are essential to get directly to the point. As an heavy reader I like to have theses summaries detached from the article.
I like how the first sentence embodies the very idea it is espousing. If you read only that sentence and close the page, you've still have taken away 80% of the information of the piece.
An important UI component for this technique to land: the first sentence must be short, and on its own line. Do that well, and a "TL;DR" prefix is optional at best.
TLDR: Today's emerging conventions are tomorrow's traditions.
The tools that the English language now has to summarise and communicate thoughts most likely emerged as a convention after years or decades of use, just like any other part of linguist evolution.
I also disagree that having an acronym unfamiliar to someone would prevent them from reading on.
I like TLDR for being able to cmd+F to it quickly. In a well written article with an abstract or a good first sentence, I still have to find the first sentence. With a TLDR, I can jump to that section quickly. I know this sounds like the height of being lazy, but I assure you, it's not.
I think TL;DR; also serves an important role of sarcastically dismissing unreasonably long diatribes that go nowhere, say for a Steve Yegge blog post or something like that. Although, I agree for prefacing you're own work with TLDR, it is somewhat annoying usage.
Great point, although tl;dr works for short comments, whereas the "trick" of putting the summary in the beginning of a text needs some actual "body" before it works - otherwise it is just confusing.
It means "too long; don't read." I'm not sure why the past tense variation sticks; but it's a label/post-it/card/sign/placard/billboard/sign-post/warning/caute!/message not to read the identified text for concern of irrelevance.
It's like a voting system. The ";" functions as the hash tag: "#tldnr", "#tldr", etc.
Doesn't make sense. "N" does not pick out the beginning of any word. If you chance across the tag, your interpretation is less obvious than,
"... Too Long; Do Not Read"
The contraction makes sense, and thus the natural transformation into a meta-informative suggestion makes sense. Contractions serve to convey information, usually engendering more intimate dialogue. So it also invites the question of "why not"? And we all know how that goes. It invites the author and really any reader to a game not dissimilar to trolling, usually. It may not take a position necessarily, in terms of the message, and this is not required of what I am saying; however, an explanation of why one would post it at all stands in order. I think the conveying of information to other readers is also important.
