6 ms·
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,
by gliese1337 14y ago
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.
- Pitarou 14y agoI've never seen a TL;DR that wouldn't serve the reader better if it were put at the beginning, rather than the end.
- repsilat 14y agoOften 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. TL;DR: I'm conflicted.