The expression for this episode is “to make a long story short”. I use this one a lot, whenever I want to summarize something that takes too long to explain in full detail. Usually, this is used when there is a time limit on the discussion.
to make a story short
长话短说
Let’s jump right into the first situation here to help this one make sense.
Max, Mike’s friends, works at a local architecture firm. He is having lunch with Mike on his lunch break. Max wants to ask out a women that he works with, and has been asking Mike for advice. Max asks Mike how he met his wife.
Oh, man, Max. Good question. Well, I know you only have 10 minutes left on your lunch break, so to make a long story short, we met in college. Because we joined the same club, we ended up hanging out a lot because we have mutual friends and things just kind of develop naturally from there. I’ll tell you the whole story next time when you have more time.
In this situation, Mike understands that Max doesn’t have much time left on his lunch break, so rather than telling him the whole story which would take far too long, he said “to make a long story short, we met in college”. This is a way to summarizing or shortening a long story that for some reason can’t be explained in full detail.
Let’s look at another example. It’s the same situation, but it’s used in a different way.
Oh, man. It’s a long story and I know you have to get back to work soon. Long story short, we met in college.
In this example, instead of saying “to make a long story short”, Mike shorten the phrase to “long story short”. This is very common in speech. You’ll definitely notice native speakers doing this now that you are aware of this expression.
A couple other things should be mentioned here. In the US, people say ‘college’ to mean ‘university’, although it’s technically wrong in that college is a two-year school and university is a four-year school. But still, most Americans use ‘college’ to refer to ‘university’.
That's all for today's episode. Hope you like it.
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