Why Academic Editors Should Read Thing Explainer

In November, the academic editing book club will meet online to discuss Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe of xkcd. This book club is run by the Academic Editing Special Interest Group (SIG), a collaboration of Editors Canada and the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA).

Francis Crick said his copy of The Children’s Encyclopaedia influenced him more than any other book. Arthur Mee offered it in 1910 as “the first book that has ever tried to tell the whole sum of human knowledge so that a child may understand. … It is written in the words the children know” (p. 2). I, too, learned a lot from books I read as a child, but these days I mostly read books with challenging language and not many pictures. So it was a treat to review Randall Munroe’s Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, which is unlike any book I’ve read in a long time — maybe ever. 

As a matter of fact, this is a big kids’ book

Somebody important must have said to webcomic creator Randall Munroe, “Explain it to me like I’m five.” His Thing Explainer is a fitting reply, its tall pages full of funny little stick-person pictures with things named like old toys: “looking glass,” “writing stick,” “hole-making city boat,” “listening box.” The book is written using only “the ten hundred words that people use the most” (p. 57), a list that takes up four big pages. Munroe says (on the “Page before the book starts”) that writing using only these words allowed him to “let go of [his] fear of sounding stupid. After all — when you’re saying things like ‘space boats’ and ‘water pushers,’ everything sounds stupid.” 

Indeed. At first, I did not like the book’s simple but sometimes confusing descriptions and its light, child-like approach to serious matters. Before long, though, I came to see much sense and meaning in this not-at-all-stupid book.

Lessons for academic editors 

Academic editors know that using simple words to explain not-so-simple things can be hard to do, especially for people who know a lot about those things. Such people use their own special words — but these need to be explained using words a learner already knows. 

While you might not suggest your client write of cells as “tiny bags of water you’re made of” in a grant application, to call lysosomes “little bags of death water” (p. 6) would be about right, and memorable. And they might well tell a story about throwing very heavy objects off a boat to explain large particle accelerators to a review panel (p. 32).

For those whose job is to help academics elucidate their work — that is, to make it clear and easy to understand — Thing Explainer offers some useful lessons:

• Using plain words to describe things (“light blockers,” “car stoppers”) can be clearer for readers than using their proper names (“blinds,” “bollards”).
• This works in science, too. For example, “‘The Great Dying’ sounds like a name made up to use simple words, but it’s not; serious people call it that” (p. 53).
• Sometimes several words are needed in place of a single word, and that’s OK. This is how we explain terms like “elucidate.” It can be fun.
• A picture is worth ten hundred words.

Pictures are important, and other key reminders

We know images are important in teaching — and much of this book would be near impossible to understand without its pictures. But the right words can give us clearer pictures too. Consider data centres: “‘The cloud’ is just a lot of buildings owned by big companies. They’re full of rows of computers” (p. 26). Munroe sometimes joins his simple words into beautiful, perfect expressions like “tiny wooden tree eggs” (p. 13). Sometimes such terms even earn a place in history — think of Sagan’s “pale blue dot.” 

Yet with only ten hundred words at hand, Thing Explainer is sometimes forced into awkward spots where a wider but more natural vocabulary would help. Similarly, scholarly writers sometimes need to make use of precise terminology and, yes, even jargon, to explain themselves. And I’m aware this review might have been easier to write (and read) had I allowed a bigger set of words into it — but I hope it gave you a fair picture.

Author’s note: Munroe’s Up-goer 5 text editor system found this review stays with its 1000-word vocabulary. Mostly.

Join the discussion

The Academic Editing SIG will be discussing Thing Explainer on November 21 at 1 p.m. ET. Please consider joining us for what promises to be a generative conversation. RSVP here to receive the Zoom link. 

Our next academic editing book club will meet in February 2026. Details on the event (book, date, and RSVP link) will be announced in the Academic Editing and Editors Canada newsletters and posted on social media. Keep an eye out for more!

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