They say that the best way to gauge if someone understands a topic in depth is to see if they can explain it in language simple enough that a 5 year old can understand. Too many people use acronyms and buzzwords to explain stuff that just confuses people and makes it harder to figure out what people are talking about. There was an old XKCD joke about explaining something using the top 1k most commonly used words in English (See an example about a Rocket below). There is a book about it as well called the ‘Thing Explainer‘ that I had gifted to Vir (my Nephew) a while ago. They both (Vir & Sara) love it and still refer to it quite often.
Theo Sanderson was inspired by the idea and has created a website where you can attempt to explain something with only the top 1000 most commonly used English words.
Up Goer Five
Writing like this actually sounds a lot easier than it is and when I tried it, it took me a few tries to write something that passed the test. Check it out and share your creative writing. 🙂
– Suramya