make a long story short, to

To skip boring, extraneous, or unnecessary details; to get to the point. Anyway, to make a long story short, I got expelled for writing graffiti on the bathroom stalls. My friend introduced me to her at a work function a year ago, and, to make a long story short, we're moving in together next month.

to leave out parts of a story to make it shorter; to bring a story to an end. (A formula that introduces a summary of a story or a joke. See also long story short.) And—to make a long story short—I never got back the money that I lent him. If I can make a long story short, let me say that everything worked out fine.

Get to the point, as in To make a long story short, they got married and moved to Omaha. Although the idea of abbreviating a long-winded account is ancient, this precise phrase dates only from the 1800s. Henry David Thoreau played on it in a letter of 1857: "Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long time to make it short."

To get to the point. Although the idea of abbreviating an account is very old—the Roman writer Pacuvius used a similar expression about 160 b.c. (Ut multa paucis verba unose obnuntiem)—in English the term became current only in the nineteenth century. Thoreau played on it: “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short” (Letter to Mr. B., 1857).