Avoid Nominalizations

Unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, avoid nominalizations. A nominalization is a noun derived from and communicating the same meaning as a verb or adjective. It is usually more direct, vigorous and natural to express action in verbs and qualities in adjectives.

no: Our expectation was that we would be rewarded for our efforts.

yes: We expected to be rewarded for our efforts.

no: There was a stuffiness about the room.

yes: The room was stuffy.

Nominalizations frequently crop up in noun strings. A noun string, a series of nouns that modify one another, is often concise but ambiguous. If the noun string is short, it can usually be tamed with a few judicious hyphens:

no: The test area (випробувальний полігон) probes were delivered last week.

yes: The test-area probes were delivered last week.

Longer noun strings, however, are often confusing, and it is generally best to unstring them by converting nominalizations back to verbs or by adding a few strategic articles and prepositions:

no: Missile guidance center office equipment maintenance is performed weekly.

yes: The office equipment in the missile guidance center is maintained weekly.

Like passive voice, nominalizations can serve some useful purposes:

a. Nominalizations can facilitate smooth transitions between sentences by serving as subjects that refer back to ideas in previous sentences:

Susan refused to accept the five-stroke handicap (in golf). Ultimately, this refusal cost her the match.

b. Nominalizations can be effective when you choose to desensitize a statement by converting the more vigorous and direct verb form into the less vigorous and direct noun form. Thus,

He is scheduled to be executed on Monday.

becomes

His execution is scheduled for Monday.

c. Since nouns often name material things, they have a certain status in our culture, where the concrete often seems more real (hence, more credible) than the abstract. Therefore, although nominalizations often result in pompous and convoluted prose, they occasionally can be used to make the abstract seem more concrete and, perhaps, more convincing. Thus,

The colonists would not tolerate being taxed.

becomes

The colonists would not tolerate taxation.

Joseph Williams neatly sums up these first two principles (write in the active voice and avoid nominalizations): "Try to state who's doing what in the subject of your sentence, and try to state what that who is doing in your verb.... Get that straight, and the rest of the sentence begins to fall into place" (Style, 1^st ed., p. 8)

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