What Are the Extraneous Characters before Bushwick Excerpts?
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I’m using the Bushwick theme (as it’s practically the only one that allows a vertical header image). One feature that I like is the ability to create Excerpts at the top of posts. But preceding my published excerpts are these characters: TL;DR-
What are they, and why do they appear? Can I get rid of them? If so, how?
/Mr Lynn
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
The “TL;DR” that you are seeing stands for “Too Long; Didn’t Read,” and has come to be an Internet abbreviation for an excerpt or summary from a longer piece. The practice even has a Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read
You can probably hide this through the use of some CSS coding, but that would require the purchase of the Custom Design add-on. If you decide to go that route, you’ll want to check out the CSS Customization Forum linked below to make sure that it’s a possibility:
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Thanks for the quick response, amwp. I read the Wikipedia entry, and learned something new!
However, the shorthand for “Too Long; Didn’t Read” is clearly an editor’s comment on a text, and that’s how Wikipedia uses it. It does not, or should not, be applied to an excerpt created by the author as a tease, or pull quote, to help readers. That is a misuse of the expression.
Can you alert The Powers That Be at WordPress of this error, and get them to stop adding this misleading abbreviation to our excerpts?
/Mr Lynn
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I will be happy to make a note of it to the theme designers (this is a function of the Bushwick theme rather than WordPress.com overall), however it will of course be up to them as to whether or not a change is made to the theme.
In any case, thank you for your input!
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P.S. You may find if you continue to research the use of “TL;DR,” that it has been embraced to be used by authors in their own works as well as by editors and commentators. Exactly as the excerpt does, authors have taken to providing a “TL;DR” summary of an overly-long email/memo/blog post for those who may not be inclined to read the entire thing in hopes of still getting their message across. With that in mind, the usage in this case is correct.
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Thanks, amightywp. I’ll take your word for it that the shorthand has been adopted by some authors on the ‘Net. I think, however, that for most visitors and readers this is mighty arcane. I’ve been reading blogs for years, and don’t ever remember seeing it. The ‘TL;DR’ will look to most, as it did to me, as just some mystery coding that mistakenly came through.
Perhaps the theme designers could make it an author’s option, rather than a default.
Thanks for your help.
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