What to do when a very long noun form is the subject of the sentence
WHAT do you do when your favorite newspaper mesmerizes you with a sentence this long: “A free seminar on using novel nutritional technologies and innovative techniques to help Filipino poultry raisers optimize their yield and increase profit in the light of rising feed and production expenses has been set at the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, its organizer, ABC Biotechnology Corp. said”?
That sentence—it’s from an actual news release run by a Metro Manila broadsheet ( only the company name is disguised)— almost always stumped par- ticipants of my business writing seminar many years ago when I asked them to rewrite it for clarity. Its subject is, of course, the 32- word behemoth phrase “a free seminar… rising feed and production expenses,” and its operative verb is “has been set.” However, by the time you reach that verb, no doubt you’d already be gasping for air and likely would have lost track of what the sentence is trying to tell you.
Years before I made that sentence a staple writing exercise, an avid follower of this column from India asked me how best to deal with monstrously long noun forms like that. He sent me a news lead that, although it had a subject less than half as long, was no less troublesome from both the construction and reading comprehension standpoints: “Isolated instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations have been reported.” Surajit asked: “How do I reduce the length of the subject? In one of your past columns that briefly dealt with this topic, you suggested that the long subject be broken up [to introduce the verb earlier using the discontinuous-phrase option]. I tried it with the sentence above, but the resulting sentence doesn’t sound natural. Look: ‘ Isolated instances have been reported of terrorist outfits manipulating the stockmarkets to raise funds for their operations.’”
I explained to Surajit that the problem with sentences with a very long noun form as subject is that the operative verb comes too