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Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

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Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

#101

Post by makecheck »

A great idea. See, the point is to be understood by everyone. Nothing is gained by making crazy sentences out of words that most people have never heard of. Is that supposed to impress people?

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.

Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

#103

Post by phaedryx »

gertef wrote: post #78
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technique is working quite well for Donald Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/15/ho... > 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 wh…

Trump does not limit himself to anything like the most common 1000 worrds

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/10/20/donald-t...

He does use very simple words.

Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

#104

Post by WalterBright »

sremani wrote: post #82
jonathankoren wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt it, who wants to sound like a very stupid child? 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.

This is the problem with intelligentsia, they want to sound intelligent, using "heavy hitter" words. What about the intelligent person who is non-native speaker? This association of English fluency with Intelligence has ruined untold number of careers in the world, esp. in countries where English is official but non-native language. I welcome simplified English in every shape or form, from limiting words to changing…

> This is the problem with intelligentsia, they want to sound intelligent, using "heavy hitter" words.

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?

Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

#106

Post by jonathankoren »

meric wrote: post #56
jonathankoren wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt it, who wants to sound like a very stupid child? 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.

"stupid" = depends on the age. Unless you meant all children are stupid....

I meant a 5 year old on the left side of the bell curve of all all 5 year olds.

Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

#107

Post by nickcano »

kazinator wrote: post #44
gregschlom wrote: post #24

Am I the only one to find that using only the 1,000 most common words actually makes thing harder to understand? The writer ends up having to use convoluted paraphrases to refer to things where a precise, well defined and well understood word exists but it's not part of the top 1,000.

With just the words "zero" and "one" strung together in some combination, we can describe a JPEG image, which can be a picture of anything. (For instance, a black and white scan of the word "deoxyribonucleic" in a Times Roman font).

I dare you to find someone willing to, without a computer, parse such a description. JPEG is a surprisingly non-intuitive, complex format.

You're right, you can be more precise that way, but precise text means nothing if nobody is reading it.

Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

#108

Post by mrrrgn »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #42
gregschlom wrote: post #24

Am I the only one to find that using only the 1,000 most common words actually makes thing harder to understand? The writer ends up having to use convoluted paraphrases to refer to things where a precise, well defined and well understood word exists but it's not part of the top 1,000.

The technique is working quite well for Donald Trump: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/15/ho... > 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 wh…

I hope that they normalized the data to account for the number of words spoken during each debate, rally, etc... This is important because of Zipf's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law

If they didn't, the findings are invalid.

Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

#109

Post by jonathankoren »

sremani wrote: post #82
jonathankoren wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt it, who wants to sound like a very stupid child? 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.

This is the problem with intelligentsia, they want to sound intelligent, using "heavy hitter" words. What about the intelligent person who is non-native speaker? This association of English fluency with Intelligence has ruined untold number of careers in the world, esp. in countries where English is official but non-native language. I welcome simplified English in every shape or form, from limiting words to changing…

There's a huge difference between using the correct word, and using a proverbia 10 dollar word. Limiting yourself to the "ten hundred" most common words is just limiting. You can't even say you're hurt.[0]

[0] http://www.esldesk.com/vocabulary/words

Re: Cleartext: A text editor that only allows the 1,000 most common words in English

#110

Post by tormeh »

Tharkun wrote: post #55
kf5jak wrote: post #12

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/

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.
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