141–150 of 230 posts
Would love a slider that would allow you to adjust the words allowed from 500 most common words in English to 10k most common words. Also, it would be great if you could compile a windows version.
Or how about the more uncommon the word the more like the background tone it is so that you get instant visual feedback?
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.
I think a much better approach would be to start with the 1000 most common words, but allow defining terms from there. This allows you to develop the correct jargon which will both enhance understanding and allow communication with others about the topic in the future. 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…
It'd be absolutely awesome if these lexicon files evolved organically and were public over time to graph how language progresses...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be handy for non native English speakers though - less to learn.
Even so, you still really have to know the idiomatic phrases, which can be considered as separate semantic units. Just because you know what "follow" and "up" are doesn't mean that you know what it means to "follow up".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be handy for non native English speakers though - less to learn.
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.
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 read years ago that the vocabulary used on TV was about 2,000 words. A high school graduate has a vocabulary of 10,000 words, a college graduate 30,000, and there are a million words in the English language. What was interesting to me was that I could learn a foreign language by only learning 2,000 words!
That is interesting. What about languages other than English? Any idea about the avg. word count needed to learn them? (Used on TV does seem like a good benchmark for "learned). Or is it roughly the same for every language, do you think?
It's neat but not very useful. I'd actually be interested in an editor that enforces E-Prime[1] to see if it made writing more clear. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
https://github.com/AndrewHynes/eprime-mode
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/10/20/donald-t... He does use very simple words.
This also ignores also that most Democratic presidents spoke on the same level
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.
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.
I think a much better approach would be to start with the 1000 most common words, but allow defining terms from there. This allows you to develop the correct jargon which will both enhance understanding and allow communication with others about the topic in the future. 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…