“All drafts exceed their word limit“, David Topps, 2017.

In any writing activity during the drafts, it is inevitable that the writing team will exceed its wordΩ limit. In the time of tree mangling, where column inches were short, this made sense. With the advent of online publishing and open-access journals, one might be forgiven for thinking that such limits no longer apply.

But this law is a strong law. Its effects are powerful. In the evanescent world of online publishing and social media, two factors predominate: the Twitter 140 character count, and the TL;DR effect — Too Long, Didn’t Read.

For example, when Tweeted, the above simple observation is ironically truncated by Twitter at the red Ω symbol.