Today we're going to look at a very common idiom and a very useful idiom for speaking.

It's quite an easy one. It's very obvious to know what it means but

it's very very good for your speaking. The idiom we're going to look at is this one:

To make a long story short.

Now this simply means 'to get to the point quickly', 'to leave out all the details and to jump to the ending'.

So imagine you're talking to your friend in English and you have an interesting story

but perhaps you don't have time to tell all the details you can just jump straight to the conclusion,

you can use this idiom. You simply say: "to make a long

story short we did this" or "to make a long story short this happened"

so you jump straight to the ending, the point of your story. Now let's have a

look at a couple of examples in use so it becomes much clearer for you.

So I want you to imagine: this example is about a company CEO and he has no time to

explain all the details.

He just goes straight to the point. So he says or she says "the company is having serious problems at the moment

to make a long story short it is in debt and we have to make staff cuts"

So the CEO didn't go into all the details

he or she simply went to the conclusion.

He didn't say "this is why we're in debt

this is what happened, these are the problems etc."

He went straight to the point

He had no time for the details

so he used the idiom 'to make a long story short'

Let's look at another example. This is two friends who went out and were separated

and one friend is asking the other

what happened. So Sam says where did you guys disappear to last night?

And Mike says it was crazy to cut a long story short, we ended up going to a house party and

stayed out till 6am. So you can see that Mick went straight to the conclusion.

He didn't go into all the details of what happened.

Also notice that there are two varieties of this idiom we can say to make a long

story short or to cut a long story short. They both mean the same thing just two ways to express the same medium.

Now when you leave out the details and go straight to the conclusion you can

explain the details after.

So you can explain the conclusion first and then go back to the details if you have time.

So for example Mick might say to cut a long story short we ended up going to a

house party and stayed out till 6am. Then he can go to the details. He might say we were walking along,

we met a group of people and they were having fun and they said hey come back

to our house and let's have a party.

So he might explain the details after you see

So there are two ways you can either leave the details completely or you can

go back to them after if you have time and make sure you when you explain the conclusion try to explain it

in as few words as possible get straight to the point.

Ok you can go into the details after if you wish.

So if you have any questions leave them in the comments section below.

Hit the thumbs up button and thanks for watching. See you in the next video.