Simple Words for Big Ideas
If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time worried that you’re not using the right word. Many words mean close to the same thing as other words, so we sometimes think they actually do mean the same thing. I have always felt that we wouldn’t have all of those words if how they are different wasn’t important.
This means that I have spent a lot of brain power and time getting to know the special meaning of words, even if the difference was only important in my head. I want to share ideas clearly, and if the simple differences aren’t clear, the more confused those ideas become.
Near to today, my wife and I were talking about different kinds of sick-making water. One sick-making water is in some animal’s skin, (like some green jumping animals, but not the ones around here). For another kind of sick-making water, the animal puts it into other animals by biting, (like that long animal without legs or arms).
We often use the same word for these two kinds of sick-making water, but that is wrong. I used the wrong word and my wife told me what the right word was. She studies living things with other big-brain people in white coats and the difference between those two kinds of sick-making water is very important. It would be important to you too if you were in some place with animals with sick-making water, but didn’t know which kind.
In early school, being clear about words meant that my friends would count on me for word help for class work, but didn’t like my words outside of class when we were talking. The clarity I wanted took more time than they wanted.
As I got older and went to more school, that way with words was often a good thing. Being clear about ideas is a hard part of later school. The kind of thing I studied at school was all about ideas that most people didn’t know and didn’t want to know about. I learned a lot of big, long words for those ideas. It was helpful to have other big, long words to explain these new big, long words. If the words were clear, the ideas were clear.
I did this kind of explaining so much, I saw that spending all my time making sure my words were clear, was taking too much time. People would be kind enough to listen, but they were tired before I got to the ideas. Sometimes, being clear about words took away from being clear about ideas.
What you are reading here is me trying to be clear without needing those big words. I got the idea from the book “Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple words” by Randall Munroe. If you know the computer pictures “XKCD,” he’s the same person. Munroe, like me, is known for using longer words than are needed. He wrote the book using only the ten hundred words people use the most. Ten hundred, because that other word isn’t one of them.
Munroe explains space boats, food-heating radio boxes, the U.S.’s laws of the land, and more, using only those ten hundred simple and common words. It’s a forced simplicity that does not block idea-sharing but makes it easier because we don’t have confusing words in the way.
Next time, I’ll use big words again. I like them. They’re my friends and I still think we have so many for a reason. It’s important to use the right words though. Sometimes, they’re big, long words. Other times, clarity comes from simplicity.
