Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English
github.com
github.com
This is more of an XKCD fan boy project. So let's look at a famous XKCD comic using this, "US Space Team's Up Goer Five". "US Space Team" barely makes sense, does more to obscure than illuminate, and "Up Goer Five" makes no sense at all.
Unless you meant all children are stupid....
First off, there are many dimensions to reading new languages. Nobody is saying "learn 1000 words of English and you're done for life". Rather, achieve fluency in a subset, then work on becoming more idiomatic. If you're lost somewhere and need help, nobody cares that you sound like a stupid child. (They probably won't notice, though. I've found through learning other languages that rare words are actually very rare and of extremely limited use. Obviously if someone uses it and you don't know it, you're stuck. But you can get by without it.)
US Space Team tells you what NASA does. NASA on its own tells you nothing about what they do, for all you know it could be the National Agricultural Sabotage Administration, and their goal is to blow up farms.
You have to separate language out into the multiple dimensions that it encompasses in order to understand certain aspects. It's clear to me that you use language as a social signalling method, "that person doesn't know what NASA is, hah, they're dumb and I won't associate with them as a result." That's fine, but there is another aspect: explaining ideas. And that can be done with less than the full set of all English words.
I welcome simplified English in every shape or form, from limiting words to changing spellings and streamline it. Its no more language of people from England, every one in the world has stake in it. English reformation is long over due.
Some people insert heavy hitter words into their speech in order to sound more intelligent. It comes across as unnatural and awkward, though.
But people who have acquired large vocabularies organically, by being around people who talk that way or by reading a lot, use it naturally and unthinkingly. And then there are authors and such who use language like a painter uses color. English is a very rich language, and if you want to paint a rich scene with words, there is quite a palette to choose from. Would you tell a painter he can only use primary colors?
> Some of his answers last only a few seconds, some are slightly longer, but almost all consist of simple sentences, grammatically and conceptually, and most of them withhold their most important word or phrase until the very end. Trump’s sentences end with a pop, and he seems to know instinctively where to put the emphasis in each one.
https://medium.com/@mortenjust/i-doomed-mankind-with-a-free-...
He does use very simple words.
If you're talking about presidents (which is unfair, the type of speech you give as president vs candidate, and debates are different), it's clear that although the trend was downward, for the past few presidents the average level was about 8th grade:
http://www.vocativ.com/interactive/usa/us-politics/president...
Trump speaks at a 4th grade level. Probably intentionally.
If they didn't, the findings are invalid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langu...
Trump uses political language
political language makes murder respectable
------
Trump makes murder respectable
Trump was against the Iraq War, probably the biggest killing event of the last xxx years.
Regardless of politics, Trump has a very idiosyncratic approach to speaking. His mastery of this approach reminds me strongly of the Orwell essay linked above.
I've no desire to debate Trumps policies on HN, but find his approach to speaking quite interesting.
So in a way, yes, he has made murder respectable. The previous two POTUS' made murder respectable by using remote controlled flying bombs.
You don't know what an ad hominem is. Those were called insults, insults are not ad hominems.
> The guy is acknowledged to have won (basically) every republican debate.. would you suggest a child can do that?
Yes actually, a decently intelligent high school child could win against that pack of dim bulbs. Republican debates are a joke won by whichever person throws enough red meat to the crowd and insults the other guy the best; they're an embarrassment to even watch.
But to compare him to a four year old then make a sweeping statement like "isn't that bright" ?
How could anyone think this? Isn't it obvious that there are domains in which he is, for better or worse, exceptionally intelligent within that domain?
> Isn't it obvious that there are domains in which he is, for better or worse, exceptionally intelligent within that domain?
No, it isn't. He's rich because daddy was rich, without that leg up he'd be living in a trailer park slobbering on himself.
It's actually a sign of intelligence to use the simplest language necessary when expressing yourself to a broad audience (many with low education). People who use unnecessarily large words are usually doing it to try to sound smarter than they are and to build up their own egos.
The purpose of a dictionary is to aid you in understanding the meaning any English speaker or writer is trying to convey independent of the time period or location, not to dictate valid and invalid words. Some words might be dropped from abridged dictionaries when they fall out of popularity but in 'The English Dictionary' (which doesn't really exist but is approximated by dictionaries like Oxford's) words are added but never removed.
This is different, than say, the mission of L'Académie française which is to act as a language regulator and maintain the official vocabulary and grammar of French.
Sesquiedalian seems to have been popping up since the 1600s.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/176752?redirectedFrom=sesquipe...
I'm an independent that lives in NYC. My vote is always a throw away vote.
Not so much about what they wanted to do in the future. They didn't stand for elections.
What a lot of smart people don't understand though, is that in politics, not trying to solve problems, but trying to appeal to people is the goal. And you don't use the same tools at all for that.
But we're not really talking about the description of a picture, we're in fact talking about political discourse.
Now, do you want me to recite a bunch of ones and zeros? Or would you rather I say, "It's a picture of a white cliff on the shore of the sea, possibly in the south of England; in the foreground there's a person's silhouette, too small to pick out their gender..."?
If, as you say, you could argue that the ones and zeros makes for a more precise description, then obviously you would prefer that option, yes?
You're right, you can be more precise that way, but precise text means nothing if nobody is reading it.
To paraphrase and copy-edit your perceptive comment. (The subject made me do it).
Having to continually fall back on silly terms like "up goer" does nothing to enhance understanding when you can define what a rocket is and then just use the word rocket.
It'd be absolutely awesome if these lexicon files evolved organically and were public over time to graph how language progresses...
----
If you want to make new things for a computer, you first have to write them down in a way that a computer can understand. You have to use strange computer words, not normal human words. People usually only talk to other people, so talking to a computer using only computer words is very hard.
To make it easier, there are things that take human words and then write them out as computer words so you don't have to do it yourself.
Those things were made by people who went to school for a long time. To make them, they had to know all the human words and all the computer words too. Thanks to them, you can write stuff that feels pretty normal to you, and still be able to make new things for a computer. It's still a little bit hard, but you can learn the simple stuff in a few days.
A long time ago, only a few people could build new things for computers. But today, many people like you and me build them for money or just for fun on their free time.
Just imagine: you could build a whole new thing today. A thing that no one ever had before. And if the thing you build actually helps other people, you can get a lot of money for it. That's what many of us in the "Thing Building News" place do. We go there to share stories about the things we build.
I now want to thank the people who went to school for a long time and made the things that turn human words into computer words. They help us do easy and fun stuff for money.
The first compiler took someone with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Vasser, a master's from Yale and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale and 3 years of experience with the machine.
And even then :
"Nobody believed that," she said. "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic."
An average 4 year old in extreme poverty or public care has 10M words directed at him. A 4 year old with professional parents hears 50M. That's a key differentiator that drives future potential.
Many people lack sophisticated literacy for a variety of reasons. When Honda opened a factory in Alabama, they changed written assembly instructions into pictograms due to the poor literacy level. In aviation, documentation is written in "simplified technical English" to assist non-native English speakers.
Writing is the problem of communicating ideas, and doing to to a sufficiently prepared audience, effectively.
The problem with stunts such as this -- and there are others, the "if you stop writing for 5 seconds your text starts disappearing" demo a few weeks back comes to mind -- is that they confuse the medium with the message.
Yes, it's possible to have confusing writing on account of unfamiliar terminology. That's a frequent problem with many Wikipedia articles, or much academic writing of the past few decades (older works -- say, 1950 and prior, to the 18th or even 17th century -- are often far clearer).
But the problem most often isn't just the vocabulary, it's the structure of the writing. Pop open a book of Darwin or Adam Smith (I've been reading both) and turn to a random page. Once you get over a slight old fashionedness of the writing, the thoughts are clear.
It is impossible to tell a narrative clearly if you've not organised your own thinking about it.
I've been doing a lot of thinking ... well, about a lot of things. One of those topics is of data and narrative, and the difference between a dry factual presentation (say, a data table, or a simple list of events) and a story which weaves these into a consistent whole. Our minds typically work very well with narrative, sometimes too well, as false narratives can be constructed. But the best presentations I've encountered include both solid facts and a story which ties them together. Finding an author who does this well and with skill is truly impressive.
And the good ones expand your vocabulary. Another point, and one to keep in mind.
There's also Einstein's dictum: make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. The same applies to language.
Great idea, needs more words. It's too extreme.
In the case of this editor, it may actually be useful to some if `N` were configurable, and maybe exceptions could be added. (If you're writing an OS X user guide say, you want to be able to write 'OS X'!)
So yes, it sounds like using the most common 1K words would aid readability but you probably need to raise that to 2.5K or more. Low enough to avoid the use of complex words while also freeing the author from awkward phrasings.
More useful than a document which uses only 1000 common words is a document which uses only 1000 words, plus words which it clearly defines.
I feel as if I could write almost anything if I have that, and it will be self-contained and accessible to anyone with the thousand word vocabulary, plus the ability to internalize definitions, which is a very basic faculty of the intellect.
He starts the talk by assuming monosyllabic words as his primitives and builds up the words he needs to use to give the talk by providing definitions for them first.
If describing something with a limited vocabulary is awkward and impossible, maybe your approach is too complex.
My 4 year old is starting to learn how to read, and you can see in his eyes the connections made when he tries to read a basic level book. The sentence structure is obvious and predictable, and he's pretty good at getting it.
With a more complex book (Ex: The Little Red Caboose), he recognizes words and "paraphrases" the story with the pictures.
"Grammer" is a German company making automotive components.
"Grammar" is the thing with words'n sentences'n shit.
Just sayin' ;)
I can't imagine how talking about "bags of air" and "bags of yellow water" is any clearer than talking about "lungs" or "bladders".
Indeed. I thought it was an interesting experiment. The results make it abundantly clear that 1,000 words are not enough to communicate about science and engineering topics effectively even at an introductory "plain English" level.
> Eight times ten and seven years ago our fathers brought into the world a new country, born of free thoughts and doings, and completely sold on the idea that all men are created the same.
> Eighty-seven years ago our fathers brought into the world a new country, born of free thoughts and doings and the idea that all men are created the same.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
"free thoughts and doings" sounds clearer that "liberty", which could mean almost anything - did it have no prisons? I guess they really meant freedom from England's control, which isn't quite free thoughts and doings - that goes to show how poorly worded the original was.
Which is poking fun at how funny things sound when you restrict yourself to only that many words.
Randall Munroe did an entire book that way.
(There was before, under the name "1000-words.el", but it isn't very good, and it also isn't, and can't easily be made, available via MELPA. So I wrote this instead. The PR to add it to MELPA is open and awaiting review; pretty soon you should be able to M-x package-install RET ten-hundred-mode RET and get it.)
"If you find yourself on the receiving end of a message that is too hard to figure out, do everyone a favor and insist on a simpler version.
Do _everyone_ a favor? Presumptive.
If I am on the receiving end of a message that is too hard for me to understand due to my ignorance of certain terms, or due to difficulties I have parsing grammatically correct writing, then the best way for me to do everyone a favor is to work on improving my own vocabulary and/or thinking ability.
Then I will be better equipped to communicate well with a larger set of the population, and better equipped to reason well. Improving your own thinking skills is good citizenship. Improving your ability to communicate well with a wider swath of the population can help you to build bridges between communities.
If I were instead to insist that the message achieves 'clarity' by accommodating my ignorance, then I may be helping some but certainly not everyone.
"Maybe one that only uses the 1,000 most common words."
Asking others to accommodate limitations to my vocabulary is likely to increase their cognitive load; most often I'd rather them apply themselves more fully to other tasks. I can just use a dictionary! Also, this runs the risk of resulting in text that is _harder_ to understand, if they trade precise terms for needlessly convoluted grammar.
How about a thing that changes less well known words and puts in easier words?
Here's the Equality Act Easy read version: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
And the Equality Act non-easy read: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents
Here's a Google search for some easy read documents: https://www.google.co.uk/search?site=&source=hp&q=easy+read+...
Here's Mencap's (a charity that works with people with learning disability) guide to Easy Read: https://www.mencap.org.uk/make_it_clear
Instead of waiting for each word to be typed, why not show acceptable words as you are typing, so you can tell before you finish typing if it is valid.
A better application would be to underline words not included in the whitelist and to provide a synonym included in the whitelist upon right clicking.
But as I learned in school: a language's diversity is beautiful, why restrain ourselves in the vocabulary we use?
In particular, a boring text with many repetition is just hard to read, see the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11131391
Don't simplify or complicate your language without reason.
For instance, in the live example, the word "Application" is used to refer to a computer program, when the more common meaning likely refers to the verb, as in "The application of a band aid".
What was interesting to me was that I could learn a foreign language by only learning 2,000 words!
I had a friend who seemed to start replacing dead-simple phrases like “seriously!?” with “are you being facetious!?”. Ugh, this doesn’t help at all. It will either scream “hey, everyone, I learned a new word!!!” to the people who know what you said, or “say what!?” to anyone else; and they will be too busy parsing your words to hear whatever you say next.
And this advice isn’t because everyone you meet will be 6 years old or a high school drop-out. Simple words are: (1) WAY easier to pick up for everyone, and (2) many people are not using their native language, including very smart people in fields where people like big words.
English has such a wonderfully rich vocabulary... and no cow is too sacred for the 'innovators' of tech. Everyone: prepare to talk like 6-year-olds!
Although in Trob the last word in fact became "a thing which may happen but once in the usable lifetime of a canoe hollowed diligently by axe and fire from the tallest diamondwood tree that grows in the noted diamondwood forests on the lower slopes of Mount Awayawa, home of the firegods or so it is said."
Also, is there a Vim plugin to do that?
A "text" "editor" that only allows the 1,000 most "common" words in "English.
As determined by a similar online version that merely underlines words outside the vocabulary :
Very clever application. You could use this idea to only describe problems using a dictionary of known nouns/verbs to describe technical problems using a known vocabulary.
Before downvoting me, and you will, do consider that I have zero scientific evidence for the above sarcastic comment; however, anecdotally speaking, all long-term pot smokers that I happen to know seem to speak with 1000 common words, or less.
The resultant word count plots would I am guessing cluster by author, maybe other things (genre?)...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fallinghaw...
The aim of Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from
language, leaving simple concepts (pleasure and pain,
happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) that
reinforce the total dominance of the StateI'm considering applying this to my product documentation, even though our users are generally well-educated...we can't afford to have docs translated into a dozen languages, but simple English may be readable by enough foreign language speakers to make it worth the effort. English is a tough language; making it easier for new users of the language is great, IMHO.
It's also very possible to get the gist of a word, based on where it is placed and the words around it -- even if you don't know exactly what it means. (Obviously I'm not suggesting that for something like documentation writing -- but by the same token I would never think that limiting yourself to a 1,000 word dictionary for something as important as product docs would be beneficial in any way).
So, it's a joke, but maybe a useful thought exercise, too.
edit: i see that some are saying it's a joke. Poe's Law [0]?
There's evidence of limited vocabulary and lazy expression in too many venues.
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Haven't had the chance to use the tool, but sounds like a good first step to making English text easier to read.