Rt Fm

See also ReadTheFineManual for discussion of good manual writing.

Short for "Read The F**king Manual" (or "Read The Fine Manual", or just "Read The Manual"). Canonical answer to a stupid question. Also a prime sign sometimes that the person you're speaking to is arrogant and unhelpful. (IsYourRudenessNecessary?)

Moved from ReadTheFineManual:

I dislike the use of the phrase RTFM in our culture. Am I alone in this? When I found my non-technophile roommate asking some very basic questions about his new system I immediately clued in to something very obvious: they weren't unwilling to RTFM, they didn't even know where to start looking. This applies to novices on all levels. Sure I may be an expert of one domain, but I am very new to others. When I am looking for input, sometimes I get, "RTFM!" as a reply. This turns me off, fast. Well, I wish that someone would say, "RTFM: This Manual, This Section." --EricHerman

RtFm is the highest politeness form of "Read The F**king Manual".

The F can also mean "Fine" or "Friendly" or "Fascinating", if you are of the sort with delicate sensibilities. Or the F can mean absulutly nuthing (I seen it that way as well)

Someone could make a fortune with a book called "The F**king Manual". I'm not sure those other F words mean the same thing.

The expression seems rude, but in the hacker culture where it emerged, it does not have this connotation; it is simply a way to indicate that the answer was to be found in the standard documentation. People from outside the hacker culture, of course, do not see it this way, and find it rude. If you are a hacker speaking to a non-hacker, you might want to bear this in mind.

Interestingly, if one hacker says "Read The Fine Manual" to another hacker, the emotional weight is virtually the same as the "F**king" version.

Hardly. The second hacker will wonder if the first hacker's mother is in the room. I've never heard anyone say "Read the fine manual" and would guffaw if someone did.

I've heard people use the phrase in a HaHaOnlySerious sense to refer to themselves, such as "I really should read the fine manual."

There is also the inverse usage. "I'm sorry I haven't RTFM yet, I'm in a rush/a lazy so-and-so. Could you explain how to foop the wimwam, please?"

And let us not forget the cases where TANFM, There Ain't No Fine manual. You can recognize this situation: if any documentation even exists it will have code errors, be more than 50% blank placeholder chapters, and be written for two versions ago.

All of these nicey-nice comments here and on IsYourRudenessNecessary miss the point. There's always some lazy bozo who is happy to waste 10 minutes of your time in preference to spending 10 seconds of his own time.

Typical scenario while you're trying to get work done: 

   "Hey, what's the option to ls to see the long version?"
   "It's -l".
   1 minute later, interrupting your train of thought:
   "What's the option to see files that start with period?"
   "It's -a".
   1 minute later, interrupting your train of thought:
   "What's the option to sort files by time?"
   "It's -t
   1 minute later, interrupting your train of thought:
   "What's the option to list by access time instead of mod time?"
   "It's...hey, RTFM, willya? Quit bugging me!"
Just who do you sympathize with in that particular exchange?

This is where the rude part of RTFM arose: in response to rudely lazy questions. And this is not rare, it is much more common than the other scenarios offered where e.g. someone is too much of a novice to even know that there is a manual, or where to look in it.

RTFM is shorthand for "if you care enough to ask, you should care enough to learn; my time is valuable, treat it as such."

Is RTFM sometimes used by people who are being needlessly rude? Of course; what isn't? But this is not the origin of the phrase.

At the top of the page Eric said: I wish that someone would say, "RTFM: This Manual, This Section" and that, in fact, is precisely the original and currently recommended use of RTFM, not a novel idea. Tell someone where to look themselves, not just tell them off, but expect them not to treat you as a way to avoid learning, too.

If you tell them to RtFm, probably they will be afraid to ask you where is it, because the following answer may be even more rude.

As an example of this connotation, I deleted some comments earlier today on another page here. Someone had interrupted some discussion about databases and testing in order to ask for help with testing servlets, with samples! Unfortunately, I see many such lazy and rude interjections in forums where I can do nothing about them (e.g., usenet).

Often, RtFm is the only realistic response, such as in this case. With a few words, the requester asks a question that would not only demand that the responder repeat information from readily available resources (the manual), but would also demand that the responder commit a ridiculously excessive and disproportionate amount of time to the effort.

Ironically, I have seen such requests made in the form of solicitations to contract software development services, on web sites dedicated to that market. Typically, the solicitation takes a form like "I will pay someone $100 to write a program to solve this homework problem."

--RobWilliams

Contrast: DontReadManuals

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