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If you find yourself writing a "tl;dr", consider just writing a clean, full English sentence instead. For example, INSTEAD OF.... "tl;dr Trying to draw attent

by mapgrep 15y ago

If you find yourself writing a "tl;dr", consider just writing a clean, full English sentence instead. For example, INSTEAD OF.... "tl;dr Trying to draw attention to the importance of lifecycle marketing. I build up the case, talk about where lifecycle marketing makes sense, show an amateur first attempt at it, then proceed to layout a grand idea for a lifecycle email marketing service I want to see someone build. Please share this post." ...write THIS INSTEAD: "I want this essay to draw attention to the underappreciated art of 'lifecycle marketing.' In the paragraphs below, I'll define the term, show an amateur first attempt at it, talk about where the practice makes sense, and then outline a comprehensive lifecycle marketing service I hope someone else will build." A formally declared "tl;dr" with sentences that are super concise, to the point of being ungrammatical, is better than no summary at all. But good writers can gracefully communicate to readers the essence of material to come using nothing more than plain words. Doing so does far more to encourage the reading and sharing of your entire essay than an explicit "please share this post." (Apologies for veering a bit off topic.)

asktell 15y ago
tl;dr Write well.
seiji 15y ago
In the Real World™, a tl;dr is called an "Executive Summary." It's a nice way of saying "Here's what this writeup means if you don't have time to read it or aren't bright enough to understand it fully."
- anamax 15y ago
  > In the Real World™, a tl;dr is called an "Executive Summary." Umm, no. "tl,dr" means "I didn't read it, don't think that you should, and now I'm going to tell you how smart I am." Executive summaries are written by people who bothered to read {whatever}. Some are even written by folks who aren't tooting their own horn.
  - seiji 15y ago
    That's a good point. Originally tl;dr was written by other people who were summarizing an overly long post. Now people preemptively tl;dr their own overly long posts. Write more concisely and make a point instead of tl;dr'ing yourself.
  - te_chris 15y ago
    They're also read by people who may not have time to read the article in depth but still want to be at least a little familiar with the substance....
  - gala8y 15y ago
    I prefer 'Summary' or 'Abstract'. 'Executive Summary' _forces_ me to think of gentlemen in suits as if only their time would matter. Its used in business contexts, where it rightly belongs (where person reading the paper will make some decisions based on it, ie. will execute.) Abstracts are abstractions (makes sense for scientific papers). Summaries... well... summarize. Plus... calling Summary a 'tl;dr' is somehow informal and ok, me thinks.
- mapgrep 15y ago
  If you want to communicate your meaning to people who do not have time to read your entire text, the solution is to put a clear, short summary first within said text, in proper English. A cryptically brief, ungrammatical special section is hugely suboptimal, and a labeled intro section is wholly unnecessary in a 10 page essay like this. Simply write. If you have not clearly communicated the essence of your article in the first few paragraphs, rewrite until you have.
  - derefr 15y ago
    > put a clear, short summary first within said text [emphasis mine] If I see a big block of text that I don't want to read—or don't have time to read—I'm not even going to read the first sentence.† I'm going to stick it in my ReadItLater queue and forget about it. If you don't want to say "tl;dr" specifically, fine, but do distinguish it from the text following it in some way. Saying "Executive summary: X" is great: it'll be appreciated by the people who want it, and everyone else will just find it perhaps a bit dry in style, rather than actually insulting or offensive. Plus, the people who—based on your summary of the text to follow—turn out to not care to read any further, will have more time to do other things. (This is also what Email Subject lines are for. We use those for even the shortest of emails, don't we?) † Note that I have this form of "wall-of-text disgust" because so few people write well enough to make reading the first few paragraphs a valid way to extract a summary of the text. Usually all I can pull from the first three paragraphs or so of an essay about, say, "how we solved the X problem," is a very detailed description of the X problem. It's a lot easier to convince people to write a one-sentence summary after the fact, than it is to teach them proper essay-writing style and convince them to rework everything they write to imbue it.
    - mapgrep 15y ago
      If you're afraid of turning people away with a "wall of text" or a "big block of text," avoid walls and big blocks. Keep your introductory paragraphs short. In the rest of the text, put plenty of whitespace, and add internal headers and/or graphical elements where appropriate. A web in which every essay begins with "executive summary" or "tl;dr" is a web with a lot of noise. These are needless terms from the worlds of MBAs and tech commenter communities, respectively. If you seek out people who have distinguished themselves at writing — for example, Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, Steve Yegge, or Clark Shirky in the tech world — you'll notice that not one uses "tl;dr", "executive summary," etc. They simply put the information they want you to read first, FIRST. These explicit summary headers, typically added as an afterthought, are tics of inexperienced writers. They're fine! They're not evil or anything. But they are ultimately less elegant and reader friendly than truly good, considered, well constructed and ordered paragraphs. Putting "executive summary" in front of the summary is like putting a comment like "#HERE WE LOOP OVER THE USER OBJECTS" in front of a simple loop: If something that simple wasn't obvious from the structure of the text (variable name, loop operator) then you're doing something wrong( users.foreach{|user| whatever} is self documenting whereas for(kljk=0;kljk < x.length;kljk++){foo = x[kljk];whatever} is not)
- brey 15y ago
  or, as has been used in scientific papers since forever, an abstract.
PStamatiou 15y ago
I use tl;dr more of for use of being a comedic instrument. It goes in hand very well the the meme pictures throughout my post. I could have written it much more adult like but that's the voice I decided to use in this post. :)

by mapgrep 15y ago

asktell 15y ago

tl;dr Write well.

seiji 15y ago

In the Real World™, a tl;dr is called an "Executive Summary." It's a nice way of saying "Here's what this writeup means if you don't have time to read it or aren't bright enough to understand it fully."

anamax 15y ago
> In the Real World™, a tl;dr is called an "Executive Summary." Umm, no. "tl,dr" means "I didn't read it, don't think that you should, and now I'm going to tell you how smart I am." Executive summaries are written by people who bothered to read {whatever}. Some are even written by folks who aren't tooting their own horn.
- seiji 15y ago
  That's a good point. Originally tl;dr was written by other people who were summarizing an overly long post. Now people preemptively tl;dr their own overly long posts. Write more concisely and make a point instead of tl;dr'ing yourself.
- te_chris 15y ago
  They're also read by people who may not have time to read the article in depth but still want to be at least a little familiar with the substance....
- gala8y 15y ago
  I prefer 'Summary' or 'Abstract'. 'Executive Summary' _forces_ me to think of gentlemen in suits as if only their time would matter. Its used in business contexts, where it rightly belongs (where person reading the paper will make some decisions based on it, ie. will execute.) Abstracts are abstractions (makes sense for scientific papers). Summaries... well... summarize. Plus... calling Summary a 'tl;dr' is somehow informal and ok, me thinks.
mapgrep 15y ago
If you want to communicate your meaning to people who do not have time to read your entire text, the solution is to put a clear, short summary first within said text, in proper English. A cryptically brief, ungrammatical special section is hugely suboptimal, and a labeled intro section is wholly unnecessary in a 10 page essay like this. Simply write. If you have not clearly communicated the essence of your article in the first few paragraphs, rewrite until you have.
- derefr 15y ago
  > put a clear, short summary first within said text [emphasis mine] If I see a big block of text that I don't want to read—or don't have time to read—I'm not even going to read the first sentence.† I'm going to stick it in my ReadItLater queue and forget about it. If you don't want to say "tl;dr" specifically, fine, but do distinguish it from the text following it in some way. Saying "Executive summary: X" is great: it'll be appreciated by the people who want it, and everyone else will just find it perhaps a bit dry in style, rather than actually insulting or offensive. Plus, the people who—based on your summary of the text to follow—turn out to not care to read any further, will have more time to do other things. (This is also what Email Subject lines are for. We use those for even the shortest of emails, don't we?) † Note that I have this form of "wall-of-text disgust" because so few people write well enough to make reading the first few paragraphs a valid way to extract a summary of the text. Usually all I can pull from the first three paragraphs or so of an essay about, say, "how we solved the X problem," is a very detailed description of the X problem. It's a lot easier to convince people to write a one-sentence summary after the fact, than it is to teach them proper essay-writing style and convince them to rework everything they write to imbue it.
  - mapgrep 15y ago
    If you're afraid of turning people away with a "wall of text" or a "big block of text," avoid walls and big blocks. Keep your introductory paragraphs short. In the rest of the text, put plenty of whitespace, and add internal headers and/or graphical elements where appropriate. A web in which every essay begins with "executive summary" or "tl;dr" is a web with a lot of noise. These are needless terms from the worlds of MBAs and tech commenter communities, respectively. If you seek out people who have distinguished themselves at writing — for example, Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, Steve Yegge, or Clark Shirky in the tech world — you'll notice that not one uses "tl;dr", "executive summary," etc. They simply put the information they want you to read first, FIRST. These explicit summary headers, typically added as an afterthought, are tics of inexperienced writers. They're fine! They're not evil or anything. But they are ultimately less elegant and reader friendly than truly good, considered, well constructed and ordered paragraphs. Putting "executive summary" in front of the summary is like putting a comment like "#HERE WE LOOP OVER THE USER OBJECTS" in front of a simple loop: If something that simple wasn't obvious from the structure of the text (variable name, loop operator) then you're doing something wrong( users.foreach{|user| whatever} is self documenting whereas for(kljk=0;kljk < x.length;kljk++){foo = x[kljk];whatever} is not)
brey 15y ago
or, as has been used in scientific papers since forever, an abstract.

PStamatiou 15y ago

I use tl;dr more of for use of being a comedic instrument. It goes in hand very well the the meme pictures throughout my post. I could have written it much more adult like but that's the voice I decided to use in this post. :)