The origin of the abbreviation is the subject of much debate
and posturing amongst the American Acronym Community (AAC). While most historians commonly attribute
it to Strunk and White’s seminal The Elements of Style, there is no textual
evidence of the abbreviation in the book.
Messrs. William Strunk Jr. and Elwyn Brooks White hint at its meaning
and later use, but the actual abbreviation does not appear in any of the guide’s
105 pages.
Text message and Twitter culture has led to an increased
emphasis on concise and condensed, and more easily digestible language.
Some note that this practice originated in the era of telegrams,
which charged by the character and predicted modern shorthand (see: the 1890
wire that substitutes “gm” for “good morning”). The particular abbreviation to which I refer is the Unified
Field Theory of brevity; encapsulating two hundred years of succinct
proofreading in only four simple characters.
An increasing number of scholars have accepted the theory
that Professor Travis Leftwich first used the abbreviation in 1998 while
lecturing at Irvington College (sometimes
derided as “Hammerfield’s safety school”). Professor Leftwich encountered a particularly difficult
student (said student’s name has been redacted from Irvington’s registrar’s
office for reasons too convoluted to express in this essay) whose gross disregard
for academic decorum led Leftwich to devise his own typographical mark to
combat this reckless wordiness.
The assignment called for 2,500 words on Hemingway’s use of the
Iceberg Theory in A Farewell to Arms. Word count was Leftwich’s one sticking point as a professor. He implored his students to formulate a
substantial argument and not to resort
to fiddling with margins, increasing font size or including their name in the final
count. If his students took the
time to write them, Leftwich would read every word. He felt that he owed it to his class, and they, in turn,
would show respect and exercise economy of language.
This affectation dated back to Leftwich’s own time as an
undergrad, studying under his mentor, Professor Pitney Remington. Prof. Remington lived and died by
Strunk and White, able to quote the exact scripture passage that had been
violated (“Passive voice was used - S&W pg. 18”). The man had even
manufactured a rubber stamp bearing the three terse letters “ONW,” omit
needless words. For years, Leftwich hoped that
Remington would bestow upon him that timesaving stamp, but the old Professor
still held onto it. Yet even that stamp would not have
helped Leftwich on the night when he encountered the now infamous essay.
It is unclear whether the student was attempting to make an
emphatic statement against Leftwich’s policy or simply didn’t read the
necessary coursework, couldn’t find anything to say and felt that he or she could
stumble his or her way to the requisite word count.
To label the essay a “Caffeine-fuelled ADHD digression”
would be generous. The paper was
possibly constructed by cut-and-pasting from assignments for other classes. Included were a section on the economics
of the Treaty of Versailles, a few paragraphs about Descartes, and two pages written
in Spanish (with an emphasis placed on demonstrating use of the subjunctive
tense). The thesis statement did
not arrive until page six (starting with word #1,742), arguing that “Hemingway
liked to hide what actually mattered under cryptic fragments and indicative
sentences.”
Leftwich stopped reading precisely after the 2,500th
word. At which point, he took out
his Montblanc pen, removed the cap and tattooed the paper with the first
appearance of that soon-to-be-commonplace
abbreviation.
Other acronymic researchers, however, insist that Prof. Leftwich
adopted this abbreviation from his wife, Dora Leftwich née Richardson. These theorists point to her time in
the steno corps at the advertising agency BCLW&P. The office was populated by copywriters who were pithy for a
living, so they felt no need to continue that trait in their off hours. This resulted in sprawling interoffice
memos that Dora would frequently proofread, edit and then return to their
original authors for revisions. Shockingly,
she was not particularly popular around the agency, but this attention to
detail was what originally attracted her to Leftwich.
On their 22nd anniversary (which occurred eight
days before the due date for the Hemingway paper) their affinity for brevity
finally became problematic. Leftwich
discovered that the love letter he had sent his wife had been marked in red ink
with this four-letter abbreviation.
Unsure if it was a tongue-in-cheek joke or a mockery of his past attempts
at being romantic, this led to several days of uncomfortable passive aggression
at home, until Dora revealed that she was not criticizing the word count
(although trims could have been made here and there) or even making a
typographical suggestion. It was
simply an ode to their early days of dating and carving their initials into
trees.
So as Leftwich stared at this student’s incoherent,
twelve-point-five font monstrosity, he started
to compose the diatribe to end all diatribes. He considered keeping his class long after the bell had rung,
lecturing them on this abomination and all of its transgressions. But, he realized, that would waste an
absurd amount of time. He ultimately
opted for a more direct strategy that would more easily get his point across.
The next morning, Professor Travis Leftwich pinned this paper,
in a Ninety-Five Thesian fashion, on the door of his classroom, serving as a
message to all present and future students. They stared up at the essay and first observed the
abbreviation that, since then, has saved many an online commentator from
unnecessary content. And that,
readers, is the commonly accepted origin of
Tl;Dr.
Tl;Dr.
-30-
Comments