Too many letters.

[GeneD]

There is a funny expression in Russian - "Ниасилил. Многа букаф." Roughly it could be translated as "I haven't managed [to finish the article, blog post, etc]. [There are] too many letters". Importantly, the whole expression is wrongly spelled, which adds humour to it. Do you say anything funny in such cases when the text was long and you didn't have a desire to finish it?

 

[Tdol]

tl;dr (= Too Long; Didn't Read)

 

[emsr2d2]

While the way Tdol wrote it is (of course) correct, many people these days don't bother with the semi-colon and write just "tldr" or "TLDR".

 

[Tarheel]

That's a new one to me, but I certainly understand the sentiment. Some free advice comes to mind, thus:

If you want people to read your post, keep it short. Get to the point!

 

[Tarheel]

True, there are some people on here who seem to think they are getting paid for doing this stuff. ;-)

More free advice:

Forget salutations and closing remarks. The reader (me) needs to focus on the question. (My two cents.)

 

[Tdol]

While the way Tdol wrote it is (of course) correct, many people these days don't bother with the semi-colon and write just "tldr" or "TLDR".

There's an irony in people who can't be bothered with the punctuation in this case. ;-)

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

TLDR would've been useful to me about 35 years ago. I was at a meeting of about fifteen people, and Joe, the chair, called the meeting to order and said, "Do I owe anyone any money?"

Two people raised their hands. Joe pulled out his wallet, opened it, and gave them each a dollar. Someone else said, "What was that for?"

Joe said, "Turn to page nine of your agenda packet." We did. He said, "Look at paragraph five."

We did. It read, "If you've read this far, I'll give you a dollar at the meeting."

 

[emsr2d2]

Stuff the dollar. If I'd received an agenda that ran to nine pages, I wouldn't have even turned up at the meeting. Life's too short!

 

[GeneD]

Today I saw tl;dr being used in the very beginning of a long post. It seemed to mean Too long. Don't bother to read further. The short answer is "x". Have I got it right? Is it another way of using the acronym?

 

[Tarheel]

My guess is it was the writer's idea of humor.

 

[GoesStation]

It stands for too long; didn't read. People often mark a summary section of a post with that; in that case, it means "If my main post is too long, here's a summary."

 

[Tdol]

Today I saw tl;dr being used in the very beginning of a long post. It seemed to mean Too long. Don't bother to read further. The short answer is "x". Have I got it right? Is it another way of using the acronym?

I guess the writer just assumed that most people wouldn't bother reading it all, so they spared them the time spent posting tl;dr and indicated to people with the patience to read a longer post that the writer has a sense of humour, which increases the chance of those people reading it.

 

[Skrej]

I've only seen tldr (in various forms) used as (usually snarky) response vs. any kind of precursor to a summary.

Another fairly common expression for an abbreviated summary is "Cliff Notes", as in "Just give the Cliff Notes version". The expression comes from a popular line of study guides, test prep, book summaries, and other study materials.

I'll sometimes say "Okay, here's the Cliff Notes version" if using it to summarize something. I also tend to use it somewhat snarkily.

Speaking of Russians, you'll sometimes hear references to 'War and Peace" as another snarky way of commenting on text you find long.

A version of that snide comment is to simply refer to something as a novel.

Dang, I just wanted a yes or no answer, not a novel/War and Peace for a response.

 

[Tarheel]

You'll also hear:

I just wanted a simple yes or no answer. I didn't ask you to tell me your life story.

 

[GeneD]

Speaking of Russians, you'll sometimes hear references to 'War and Peace" as another snarky way of commenting on text you find long.

Haha! Yes, we say it. Also, instead of "War and Peace" Russians might use "Santa Barbara" even though it's a TV series. It's understandable. I know people who managed to read to the end of "War and Peace", but I don't know anyone who watched the series from the beginning to the end. :-D

And thanks for "Cliff Notes". Never heard or seen this expression before. Really interesting. :up: