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Comment by kf5jak | Hacker News Reader

A similar editor was made for the book Thing Explainer[1] by Randal Munroe from XKCD. A book that explains all kinds of different things, from space shuttles to microwaves using the top 1000 common English words.

[1] https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/

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You can actually try XKCD's editor at https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/

Yeah it's called "thing explainer", but it's more like a "thing convoluter". It's a work humour, not a book of science.

Some of the explanations are actually going into a textbook now, to accompany more traditional text. So it seems professionals disagree with you. I will concede that it might have been clearer with the top 2000 words or something, but that's my perspective and plenty of kids might disagree, especially those that have grown up with weird dialects or even sociolects like AAVE.

No. He's doing some drawings for text books. There is no chance that the thing explainer 1000 words affectation will be adopted for the text book for the purpose of actual teaching.

Really? That's interesting. Do you have a source for that?

I can't imagine how talking about "bags of air" and "bags of yellow water" is any clearer than talking about "lungs" or "bladders".

It's a work humour, not a book of science.

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.

I should of read everything first and would of saw the reference already made... My bad

*have

Just a small nit: The words sound alike but they mean different things. You should have read everything, then you would have seen the reference. Source: grammer.

Just a small nit: The words sound alike but they mean different things.

"Grammer" is a German company making automotive components.

"Grammar" is the thing with words'n sentences'n shit.

Just sayin' ;)

He knew exactly what he was doing.

This is just a phonetic misspelling of the contraction "should've" which really is pronounced "should of"

Or "should a" ;)

However, should've is a shortened version of should have so I think the point still stands.

Ain't the English language great when we can have multiple contractions such as "couldn't've"

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