People like things short and sweet.
Give them a spoonful. I suppose.
Although, when it comes to ice cream, I know a lot of people who would rather have the entire tub.
Anyway, when it comes to reading, most people prefer the Reader’s Digest version of the thing. I should add here, Reader’s Digest, the magazine, was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wife, Lila Bell Wallace. For many years, Reader’s Digest was the best-selling magazine in the United States. But, it lost the distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens. But RD is still published worldwide today. So. Yeah. People like the short version.
Another sidebar. According to one source, the ten top-selling magazines in the United States are:
1. People
2. Good Housekeeping
3. Allrecipes
4. AARP Magazine
5. Sports Illustrated
6. Country Living
7. Taste of Home
8. Cosmopolitan
9. US Weekly
10. Better Homes And Gardens
However, I found different lists of the “top” magazines everywhere I clicked.
Nonetheless, I’m way off track and not keeping this short at all.
I try to keep my daily “blog” to about 700 words each day. Give or take. I’m not sure how I settled on this number, but there it is, and has been, for nearly 14 years now. When it first started out, though, it was just a daily photo with a couple of lines about the location. Now, it has shifted to words, words, words, and the illustration comes later.
I’m off course again.
My point is. People like things short. To the point. Succinct.
There are even “slang” internet terms for these.
So. If you get an email or a text and you see this?
TL;DR
It means someone was a Chatty Cathy.
Because TLDR translates into:
Too long. Didn’t read.
Sort of.
Mostly, TLDR is used to say that something would require too much time to read. This helpful abbreviation provides short summaries of long stretches of text.
In other words, TL;DR says, “if the text was too long and you didn’t read it all, this is what it was about.” It’s great if you are scanning a long post and just want the main points. It’s also helpful if you read all the text but want to make sure you understood it correctly. It isn’t an accusation that you didn’t read; it’s a helpful summary meant to improve communication.
So, it isn’t really the slam that it sounds like it is.
And while it isn’t really rude when you see it on Twitter or Reddit, it is probably not best to use it in a professional or formal setting.
That is the long and short of it today. I hope this wasn’t too long, and you didn’t really read it, and now, you are just skimming down to the end to get the general gist of the thing.
So. In conclusion, it wasn’t the guy from the clown school who was the nasty culprit, but the neighbor’s cat stealing the figs from the tree out back.
That’ll teach them to skip to the end.
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“There are both people who have quick intelligence, and those who must withdraw and take time to think things over.”
— Yamamoto Tsunetomo
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“Nobody in the world can dig as quick as a fox!”
— Roald Dahl
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“But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.”
— Malcolm Gladwell
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Too long. Way too long. Again.
