EDIT: another typo: “tl;dr” at the start of the post. Please consider getting rid of this habit. Your writing is, as a rule, improved by moving your main point to the top, and this reader appreciates your doing that; the cutesy Internetism is an needless distraction.
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.
I personally don’t mind “tl;dr”, but I agree that where practical it is best to use language that will be understood by as wide an audience as possible. (Start using “tl;dr” again when it becomes mainstream :) )
Dunno—I didn’t actually check the dictionary, just a Google search for relative frequency of “prize apart” which I found jarring, vs. “prise apart” which sounded no alarm. The first mostly appears with “prize” being a noun not a verb, so I supposed my gut feel was correct. Call that the Language Log method. ;)
The dictionary method does suggest “prize apart” is also correct, if less common. Looks like I made a wrong call.
I looked at it in more detail and it appears that “prise” is a valid variant of “prize” only when using it as a synonym of “pry.” So… that is a little confusing but now I know something new. :)
Typo: “prise apart” not “prize apart”.
EDIT: another typo: “tl;dr” at the start of the post. Please consider getting rid of this habit. Your writing is, as a rule, improved by moving your main point to the top, and this reader appreciates your doing that; the cutesy Internetism is an needless distraction.
Typo: “a” not “an”.
I too find “tl;dr” irritating. It is entirely unintuitive and looks like a rendering error. Too Obfuscated; Don’t Decode.
ETA Typo: missing ‘is’ ;)
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.
I personally don’t mind “tl;dr”, but I agree that where practical it is best to use language that will be understood by as wide an audience as possible. (Start using “tl;dr” again when it becomes mainstream :) )
Please don’t. I need to budget my downvotes!
Thanks, I’ll fix it ^^
“Prise” is a variant spelling of “prize” in my dictionary. Are we looking for the word “pry”?
Dunno—I didn’t actually check the dictionary, just a Google search for relative frequency of “prize apart” which I found jarring, vs. “prise apart” which sounded no alarm. The first mostly appears with “prize” being a noun not a verb, so I supposed my gut feel was correct. Call that the Language Log method. ;)
The dictionary method does suggest “prize apart” is also correct, if less common. Looks like I made a wrong call.
I looked at it in more detail and it appears that “prise” is a valid variant of “prize” only when using it as a synonym of “pry.” So… that is a little confusing but now I know something new. :)
Dictionary.com
This is the Internet. Nobody says “abstract” or “summary” on the Internet.