Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words

"—Ten-hundred! It has to be ‘ten-hundred’, because the word ‘thousand’ is not one of the most commonly used words in the English language. Because it’s charming and wildly clever. He wrote it as a sort of joke. Randall Munroe is this extraordinarily talented, clever cartoonist with a background in robotics—at one point he worked for NASA as a contract programmer and roboticist. But the book is about how to explain things using the simplest terms you possibly can. Take his diagram of the US Space Team’s Up Goer Five, which is the Saturn V rocket. At the bottom, a couple of arrows point to the jet propellers with this note: THIS END SHOULD POINT TOWARD THE GROUND IF YOU WANT TO GO TO SPACE. IF IT STARTS POINTING TOWARD SPACE YOU ARE HAVING A BAD PROBLEM, AND YOU WILL NOT GO TO SPACE TODAY. And there’s another indicator with the message: “LOTS OF FIRE COMES OUT HERE”. The accuracy! When he describes something you already know about, you think, ‘That is such a clever way of putting it in the simplest possible, soundest terms’. How would you describe helium without using the word ‘helium’? Well, in this book it’s ‘funny voice air’. It’s both clever and screamingly funny all the way through. He’ll talk of ‘hand computers’ instead of mobile phones, or ‘tiny power gates’ instead of transistors. It’s absolutely beautiful. Munroe said one of the main problems in writing this book was that the words ‘thread’ or ‘wire’ or ‘rope’ were not in the top ‘ten-hundred’ words, so he had to use ‘line’. And every time the book refers to any sort of electrical connection or wiring or anything like that, he has to call it a “line”. He had to compromise with all sorts of things. It’s just ingenious. So many people will try and sound clever by using lots of fancy words, but this is the exact opposite. It is being clever by using the most straightforward language you possibly can, without sacrificing accuracy. It’s beautifully drawn and beautifully written, and it makes me smile a lot."