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Shortcuts: WP:TLDR WP:TL;DR WP:War_and_Peace

This page in a nutshell: Write concisely.

"Too long; didn't read" (abbreviated "tl;dr") is a pointedly concise reply to someone who described something in a verbose way.^[1]

Wikipedia editors like to write, or they would not be here. What they write is often longer than necessary. Administrator candidates may be judged by how much they have written. This may be why many of the articles, instructions and comments appearing on Wikipedia are too long. Some of our core policies, such as the Creative Commons license, are very verbose, technical, hard to read, and hard to understand. People ignore instructions that take too long to read.

In the classic words of William Strunk, "Omit needless words."^[2]

Write concisely. Strive to avoid technical jargon. When you must write lengthy text, include a summary. Use simple vocabulary to aid non-native readers.

When encountering excessively long text in a Wikipedia article, consider trimming it down or splitting it into another article to fit our summary style. Citing this essay during internal discussions is considered dismissive and rude - instead, create a section on the author's talk page politely asking them to write more concisely.

[edit] See also

• {{Very long}} aka {{Tldr}}—Template used to flag articles or sections that need trimming.
• Wikipedia:It should be noted
• Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep
• Wikipedia:Ignore all rules
• Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy
• Wikipedia:List of policies
• Silent Cal

[edit] Notes and references

Look up TLDR in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.