The US military frequently uses the abbreviation "BLUF" (Bottom Line Up Front) for the same purpose as TLDR at the beginning of an email. It's not like the idea of tldr is some perversion born of the Internet.
"TLDR" is unnecessary
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Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#12I disagree. While something that is well written shouldn't need a tldr, it does service as a device for people who consume a lot of text. Its a standard shorthand indicating the author did in fact write a summary
Agreed. Plus, people are trained to ignore "wall of text" but will indeed read text labeled as tldr. It's communicating a summary. Due to the mixed bag of good writing on the Internet, we as readers cannot rely on the first sentence being an all encompassing summarization of the points.
Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#13I don't think this is generally true. The purpose of long form writing is to make the reader draw a conclusion that they may not agree with at the beginning of the article. Studies have shown that once we form a conclusion, we're much less likely to change our minds, so if an article lead with a controversial point we'd internally say "no!" and stick to it rather than letting the article make its point. By not knowing exactly what an article is arguing, we're more receptive to things that could go against our intuition.
I do agree that TL;DRs can be elided for articles that simply state facts or uncontroversial ideas.
Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#14I like TLDR for being able to cmd+F to it quickly. In a well written article with an abstract or a good first sentence, I still have to find the first sentence. With a TLDR, I can jump to that section quickly. I know this sounds like the height of being lazy, but I assure you, it's not.
Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#15TLDR is a pragmatic device; it's a written discourse marker. Calling it "unnecessary" is just like saying that "well...", "y'know", "so...", "like" and all those other little "filler words" that your high school English teacher doesn't like are "unnecessary". In formal prose, where all that's supposed to matter is textual semantics, sure, they're not necessary, and I wouldn't use them there. But in informal discourse, they're essential; not for conveying propositional information, but for negotiating social discourse information.
Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#16But how does the reader know you are one of the authors that summarise succinctly at the beginning of every article? Especially as they reader may read many articles of differing quality a day. tl;dr to me, is like statically typed English, it improves readability if you know to look for it.
Yup, composition on the Internet is different from composition for print in which "good writing" used to mean 1) intro, 2) body, 3) conclusion. Now it means: "get to teh point!!!" and maybe, if you have time, elaborate so people can follow your train of thought. When people are used to affording only 140 characters of attention, you wind up skipping all the formalities. TL;DR is a sigil. Sometimes people put it at the bottom (jerks), but at least it's easy to spot.
Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#17Pedantic, but: tldr existed well before reddit.
I know I saw it on the SA forums, where it may have originated. People would reply "too long; didn't read" to dismiss a post, which eventually was abbreviated to just "tl;dr". Anticipating this reply, authors of long posts would end their post with a "tl;dr" summary.
Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#18It means "too long; don't read." I'm not sure why the past tense variation sticks; but it's a label/post-it/card/sign/placard/billboard/sign-post/warning/caute!/message not to read the identified text for concern of irrelevance.
It's like a voting system. The ";" functions as the hash tag: "#tldnr", "#tldr", etc.
Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#19I find this a pretty weak argument against the tl;dr. "tl;dr" has become a noun, that means one-line / extremely short summary. Language sometimes grows like that.
A better argument against the tl;dr would be that the piece you're writing it for becomes redundant, provided it's an accurate tl;dr. The term tl;dr wouldn't be needed then, because the tl;dr itself becomes your piece.
If it isn't an accurate tl;dr, there's no reason for providing it in the first place, except maybe for giving a rough idea of what your piece is about. OP rightly points out, though, that conventions already exist for just that. A descriptive title or an introduction clearly distinguishable from the rest of your piece, for example.
Re: "TLDR" is unnecessary
#20Didn't tl;dr start as an insult? What the article is describing is a response to the insult that is tl;dr.