The Origin of the Abbreviation

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 2,500^th 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 22^nd 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.

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