Feb

23

TL;DR

February 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Tl;dr is an acronym commonly used on websites like Reddit and 4chan that stands for “too long; didn’t read.”  It is also used as a preface for a brief summary of a longer statement to signify to those with short attention spans that reading the related statement will provide the basic gist of the longer piece.

Believe it or not, just about every person in the world has had a tl;dr moment.  The most commonly tl;dr’d pieces of writing are user license agreements that pop up when new software is installed or after registering to a website.  Unfortunately, many students see the huge portions of reading that their professors assign and think “tl;dr” and head straight for the conclusion paragraph or just skim.

The point is that nobody puts in the effort to write long-winded pieces so their readers can think “tl;dr lol” and skip it.  The solution? Shorten up those pieces.  Say what needs to be said and be done with it.  The attention span of the average internet-goer is so infinitely small that just the sight of a traditional-length article is bound to scare them off.

The great irony is that many who spend lots of their time on the internet testify almost boastfully to the amount of time they waste online, and yet they can’t be bothered to read a three-page feature story.  People online are like children; they want to jump around here for four seconds, then run around a few times and swing on the monkey bars, then move on.  They don’t want to sit and play on just the slide for an hour.

The key to success online seems to be brevity.  Saying all of the important stuff in as few words as possible will ensure that readers will at least read all of it, and perhaps (gasp!) leave wishing there was more to read.

TL;DR: Make posts short and readers happy.



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