Is there a suitable substitute for tl;dr that you would find less distracting? I do want to signal “this is an ultra-short summary” to avoid people interpreting it as part of the “flow” of the whole article.
Is there a suitable substitute for tl;dr that you would find less distracting?
I recently had a need for such substitute to summarize a long email to an extremely busy non-chatty high-status person. I went with “In a nutshell”, and it worked—I got a nice reply.
(TL;DR is perfectly fine with me, but I don’t think it’s appropriate when addressing people who are unlikely to keep up with the latest Internet slang.)
tl;dr to me indicates something you say about somebody else’s post (which you didn’t bother to read because you found it too long). Used w/r/t one’s own post it’s very confusing.
Is there a suitable substitute for tl;dr that you would find less distracting? I do want to signal “this is an ultra-short summary” to avoid people interpreting it as part of the “flow” of the whole article.
Signaling might not be necessary, as your summary normally serves as a “hook” to draw readers into the body of the article.
That said, you could italicize or bold (my preference) the summary, or set it off from the body with a horizontal rule.
Italicized. Thanks for your input.
I recently had a need for such substitute to summarize a long email to an extremely busy non-chatty high-status person. I went with “In a nutshell”, and it worked—I got a nice reply.
(TL;DR is perfectly fine with me, but I don’t think it’s appropriate when addressing people who are unlikely to keep up with the latest Internet slang.)
The more academic substitute is “abstract.”
Not that I have anything against good ol’ TL;DR.
How about “(Ultra-Short) Summary:...”?
tl;dr to me indicates something you say about somebody else’s post (which you didn’t bother to read because you found it too long). Used w/r/t one’s own post it’s very confusing.
I use “Shorter me:”
for what that’s worth.