Making nominalization work for our prose

MANY of us are familiar with this conventional grammar wisdom: turning verbs into nouns or nominalizing them is bad for the health of our prose. This is painfully clear in this turgid example of bureaucratic writing: “The conclusion of this interim faculty performance evaluation committee is that there has been an inadequate information dissemination effort with respect to the new instruction performance standards as mandated and enforced by the Department of Education effective July 1, 2018.”

That sentence isn’t only dif-

authoritative, yet many academics and bureaucrats actually fall into the habit of making such convoluted constructions. Few of them realize that for every verb that they assiduously convert to a noun-form in such circulars, they erect just one more barrier to good communication.

Let’s check what have been nominalized in that highly convoluted sentence. The two operative verbs were converted into nouns: “conclude” to “conclusion,” and “disseminate” to “dissemination.” This gave rise to these problems: (1) a passive sentence in which nobody or nothing seems to be doing anything, and ( 2) long nounstrings with constituent nouns cross-modifying themselves into near incomprehension even before the adjective can do its own modifying job, namely “interim faculty performance evaluation committee,” “inadequate information dissemination effort,” and “new instruction performance standards.”

A good way to get out of this semantic rigmarole is to restore the nominalizations into their active verb- forms, which will clearly establish who or what the doers of the action are in that long sentence construction.

Here’s a clearer restatement: “This interim committee has ascertained that the new standards for measuring the teaching performance of faculty members have not been properly disseminated. Faculty members have not clearly understood the new instruction standards put in force by the Department of Education last July 1, 2018.”

We mustn’t think though that nominalizations have no value whatsoever in exposition. They can actually be useful in achieving these four objectives:

1. Nominalization to make abstract things more concrete and credible.

As we have seen above, this is actually what many academics and bureaucrats do to their prose — but to great excess! If done sparingly and with restraint, however, nominalization can make abstract statements more convincing.

Without nominalization: “The woman couldn’t believe More convincing with “wise” nominalized to “wisdom”: “The woman couldn’t believe

2. Nominalization as a transitional device.

statement: finally Take a look at this “The election losers after a

paved the way for better governance in a country notorious for unceasing politics.” Note that the noun-form “this acceptance” in the second sentence nominalizes the verb- phrase “accepted

effortlessly leading the reader to the next idea.

3. Nominalization to attenuate extremely harsh or forceful statements.

For extremely sensitive statements, it’s often prudent to use a nominalization instead of its more direct and vigorous verb form.

Too pointed and insensitive:

the convict tomorrow at 9:00 a. m.” More prudent statement with “electrocute” nominalized: of the convict tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.”

4. Nominalization to more clearly identify the object of the verb.

For stronger emphasis, it is often desirable to use a nominalization to identify the object of the verb in a sentence.

Without nominalization: “The job applicants are not aware of

Smoother and more concise by nominalizing the phrase “what are required by…”: “The job applicants are not aware of

Knowing now that nominalizations aren’t all that bad for the health of our prose, let’s not hesitate to use them when called for by the semantic situation.

(Next:

inverted sentences)