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TL;DR

Tanner Ringerud received a "TL;DR" badge on December 21, 2011 because they posted something that was probably pretty interesting but that nobody had time to read because we all lead such incredibly busy lives or something. TL;DR is an acronym (from the Greek words akros, meaning "limb," and onoma, meaning "name") that stands for "Too long; didn't read." It is, incidentally, the only acronym in popular use on the Internet that employs a semicolon - a punctuation mark intended for use between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction, between independent clauses and semi clauses linked with a transitional phrase or a conjunctive adverb, or between items in a series or listing containing internal punctuation, especially parenthetic commas. In the latter case, the semicolon serves as a serial comma, to avoid confusion with the other commas in the series. Kurt Vonnegut once famously said of the semicolon: "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." Another great writer who was dubious about the semicolon was the incomparable Gertrude Stein. She says of the much-maligned and oft-misused punctuation mark: "They are more powerful more imposing more pretentious than a comma but they are a comma all the same. They really have within them deeply within them fundamentally within them the comma nature." But perhaps the most enlightened remarks about the semicolon come from Physician Lewis Thomas, who made this observation: "Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines further on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath." Beautiful. Wait, what the fuck were we talking about?

These are some of the posts that earned this Award:

• "We already have the statistics for the future:...