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Ask HN: Why don't web browsers discourage words that not everyone will know?

6 pointsamichail51 comments

Given the international nature of the web, wouldn't it make sense for web browsers to discourage you from using English words in your posts that not everyone will know?

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Web browsers are for serving website content, their job isn't to moderate content especially at the level you're describing. If you want to write your own filter/extension to preserve your eyes from being exposed to unfamiliar words, you're free to do so.

Wikipedia has Simple English - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_English_Wikipedia - maybe you're looking for something like that.

But the idea that we should be discouraging difficult words, or that this should be done at a browser level is terrible in many ways.

I find this viewpoint astonishing.

That we would use technology to intentionally dumb writing down.

Instead of using that same technology to provide definitions for less common words to people who might need them.

One person's "dumb writing down" is another person's "communicating effectively."

Is your goal to (try to) teach people new words, or to communicate your points?

>Is your goal to (try to) teach people new words, or to communicate your points?

Fancy words exist for a reason, and it's that their semantics are different from other words. Sometimes using a fancy word is the correct choice, and sometimes a more common word will do.

Synonyms don't actually mean the same thing as each other.

If I'm reading a text in French and I come across a word I don't know, I look it up. It's my second language after all. I certainly don't expect French authors to dumb anything down for me.

The goal is to communicate, so I'm going to use the words that mean what I want to say rather than trying to dumb it down. It's the same reason why most if not all professions have jargon; the goal is not to gatekeep, but to efficiently communicate well understood concepts within the profession.

All of which isn't to say that people shouldn't occasionally step back and question whether they could convey the same thing without the jargon and fancy words, but frequently the answer is no, or at least not anything like as succinctly and clearly.

50% of Americans can't read a book written at an 8th grade reading level[0]. It's one of the reasons politicians don't use jargon and fancy words. I think they'd probably laugh if you told them they should be talking above their constituents' understanding.

0. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/11/...

Seems to me the solution to that problem is to fix the problems with American schools that produce such illiterate citizens, rather than continue dumbing everything down.

When I was in school, the kids that had the best grades and were in all the good programs always ended up reading. aloud. like. this.

I don't know what that means.

This is a reason to use more (appropriate/useful) words, not fewer. Politics is one of the few contexts where you are explicitly addressing the largest and most horizontally sampled set of people possible. Politicians speak that way out of necessity.

No one said an author shouldn’t choose what words to write. They are astonished people want browsers to choose. If politicians want a to use simple words, good for them.

Many words have similar meaning, yet of subtle shades of meaning, or nuances that are lost when “dumbed down”

So you’re literally communicating less effectively when using a smaller vocabulary.

The best answer is to have the reader learn the difficult word, but that isn’t always possible.

A difficult needle to thread for sure.

Yes, sometimes language is complex without adding anything, but usually there's a reason. I like the example of "apparently" vs "ostensibly". Non-native speakers often either don't know the latter, or think it's a straight synonym, but, without getting into it too deeply, "ostensibly" is usually used to mean "apparently" with added doubt.

It’s not a sincere viewpoint. The account asks questions like this every day.

Interesting take for sure, not sure if trolling though. But why don't you double down then?

Why don't web browsers discourage languages that not everyone will know?

Given the international nature of the web, wouldn't it make sense for web browsers to discourage you from using any language other than English? If you can write in English that most and more people would understand then why would you write in Punjabi, Mandarin, Xhosa, or Russian?

Yeah! Browsers should encourage the use of rebuses on web pages!

But English is not simply a language used for international communication. It's also spoken natively by millions of people. People should be entitled to develop and express a literary culture or eloquence in their own native language without censorship. You can criticize a person for using complex language if their intended audience is international. But can you really make that criticism in general regardless of context? Doing so seems to ignore some basic rights.

It's easy to forget, but things can be beautifully spoken in English. And, as with any other language, it can take some skill to perceive the beauty. Wouldn't it be wrong to modify browsers to effectively restrict the potential for that beauty? Given that the web is arguably the most popular communications platform, wouldn't restricting the use of English on the web place an unfair burden on native English speakers and on English literary culture?

Persiflage and unprovoked sesquipedalianism in whatever language is the very core of the web. Indeed, one might say its the essence of humanity.

That is not for web browsers to decide. If the creator of the website/page intends a wider multilingual audience, nothing stops them from providing translations of the same content into different languages.

In this day and age when we have access to multilingual online dictionaries, thesauri and even translators like Google Translate, discouraging unfamiliar words sounds extreme.

To see the flaw in that idea, take it a step further. Some people can't read at all, so why not force everything to be described in pictures or videos instead?

You think you are joking.

Hasn’t this happened? Everything seems to be a YouTube video nowadays instead of text manuals.

No. Don't be part of dumbing down of the web.

Look how dumbing down UI ended up: baby talk that means different things for different people and cultures, inappropriate, illogical skeuomorphisms, magic touch navigation that not everyone discovers.

Don't be part of any such effort.

This is a terrible take. So bad I can’t even comprehend asking it.

Let me give an example of the inverse of this idea:

When I was 10 or so my mom had me read lord of the rings. She also gave me a dictionary to look up words I didn’t yet know. I learned so much. The resplendent delivery of my loquacious lexicon is beatific in its copious verbiage.

Momma dun learned me cuz I dint know words gud.

I still have the medium-sized dictionary I bought for college. Many words have dates or notes next to them, from the time when I would use it for studying and doing exactly this. I also have the thesaurus, of similar size, I bought at the same time.

Today I keep a spreadsheet of "Words of Interest", where I make notes about words I encounter that I either don't know or find especially insightfully placed. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind a decent dictionary app that allowed for making permanent personal annotations. Do you happen to know of one?

I do not, that’s a wonderful idea. Please report back if you find one

How about, instead of discouraging uncommon words (English or any language), browsers provide a simple way for users to see the definition of words? I don't know about Windows, but on Mac, hover over the world and press ctrl-cmd-D to active the dictionary feature.

It would note your own pronouncement used many difficult words that could easily be replaced with shorter and more common words without sacrificing too much clarity.

Instead of international… use “global” or “world wide”. Instead of make sense… use “be good”. Instead of discourage… use “put a stop to” or “warn off”. Etc. So many substations are necessary that it would just be better to rewrite the sentence.

For example “The web is used by many people in different places. Should apps warn you if you are using words that many people do not know?”

I had to substitute browser as it is a jargon word to many people. They just go online using their phone. They don’t know what is actually handling the data of the web page.

The VOA did the research years ago, and they have extensively tested the vocabulary around the world. If you think "VOA Special English" would help your audience, go for it.

https://www.unsv.com/voanews/specialenglish/about/wordbook/V...

https://www.vocabulary.com/lists/160931 .

Given the existence of and easy access to translators and dictionaries, language barriers are somewhat less of an issue, I'd presume.

No, I want to write using British English. I will not be bullied into using American English or Indian English.

Just how would a web browser discourage a writer from using words not everyone will know?

Instead, why not just look up those unfamiliar words? It's easy enough to do in most browsers – highlight the word, right click it, and then select Search [your default search engine] for '[word]'.

Google started testing similar functionality on Google Docs recently: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-docs-writing-...

I think you mean highly specific slang that only a select few know about and is contained to one area. I have a huge vocabulary of slang that is only known in my local area, but I don't use it on The Internet. It confuses people.

No. And also the web is not really international. It is filled with little pockets.

"English words in your posts that not everyone will know?"

How do you define that?

Maybe via a threshold that you can specify in your browser settings?

I can't see this idea flying. Why should anyone or anything prevent someone from writing in the way in which they want to write? And, as one poster pointed out, how would that work?

Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvPaEsuz-tY

I don't need a web browser to be a nanny.

You can install the Grammarly addon to do that, if you want. It shouldn't be a core browser feature.

you didn’t provide a reason. what would the reason be for doing that?

The idea is to have more people understand your posts.

Those people can look at a dictionnary when they don't understand said word. I am not a native speaker and I do it all the time.

It has never been easier and it enriches my language, why would I want to avoid that?

> Those people can look at a dictionnary when they don't understand said word.

In fact, the browser can and does facilitate this very well. You can already just double click then right click and search on any word to get a definition, and I'm pretty sure there are dictionary extensions that make it even easier than having to go out to a search engine.

Writing assistant services like Grammarly accomplish this.

The responsiblity is on the author to communicate at a level appropriate for their audience. It's not on the browsers to encourage/discourage certain content.

The amount of people confused and incredulous in this thread should demonstrate that simple words doesn't make something more understandable.

doubleplusungood

This question should be taken down. It implies no intelligence in asker.

As does using a throwaway to make multiple useless comments on a thread.

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