Background: A few months ago, the online comic xkcd published an image called the up goer five. It’s a diagram of the Saturn V rocket labeled using only the 1000 most common words in the English language.

There’s a text editor that helps you write using only these words, if you want to try your hand at it.

Scientific American has an interesting reaction, and links to many samples of “up goer five” writing.

What the vast majority of the submissions we’ve read in the past week clearly show is that if you seek to move beyond the straight replacement of forbidden words and seek to recast the concept you’re trying to explain, then something quite profound can result. Here for example, is Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, distilled down to its essence by Richard Carter:

“all the animals and green things we see in the world…have all been made by the same, fixed, easy steps acting all around us. These easy steps, taken in the largest sense, being growing and having babies; being like your parents (but not exactly like them); and being able to avoid dying for as long as possible.”

If the unifying theorem of all biology can be so vividly described despite the limitations being imposed by the Up-Goer 5 list, then I think we can find it within all of us to do the same with our own research.

FWIW, I feel completely the opposite about this. When you have many different words to choose from with subtly different meanings, it allows you to be precise and to say exactly what you want. If it’s used properly, diction makes writing more clear, so you can get right at the intended meaning.

Of course, plenty of people use big words to muddy the waters. Just read any corporate memo. But having a limited vocabulary is even worse, I think.