Understanding the bimodal duration distribution (dynamic range>104) of &ggr;-ray bursts is central to determining if the phenomenon is in fact a singular one. A unifying concept, beyond isotropy and inhomogeneity of the two groups separately, is that bursts consist of pulses, organized in time and energy: wider pulses are more asymmetric, their centroids are shifted to later times at lower energies, and shorter, more symmetric pulses tend to be spectrally harder. Long bursts tend to have many pulses while short bursts usually have few, relatively narrow pulses. Two factors, viewing angle and beaming, may account for pulse asymmetry and the large dynamic range(∼200)in pulse widths. A cosmological time-dilation signature, with an expected dynamic range of order two, would be difficult to measure against these large intrinsic variations and low signal-to-noise levels of dimmer bursts. Some statistics (T90,pulse intervals) are particularly sensitive to brightness bias, noise, and apparently minor variations in definition. Also, spectral redshift would move narrower, high-energy emission from dim bursts into the band of observation, constituting a countering effect to time dilation. With analyses restricted to bursts longer than∼2 s,tests for time dilation that are constructed to be free of brightness bias have yielded time-dilation factors∼2–3,for pulse structures, intervals between structures, and durations. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.