WRT333

Nominalizations, Long Left Branches, Missing Wh-connectors
Week 4

Links this page: nominalizations | long left branches | missing Wh-connectors

Nominalization: A nominal (synonymous with nominalization) is a noun formed from a verb or an adjective. Their use often reduces readability, for several reasons. Here, we want to learn to recognize them, understand why they cause problems, and develop strategies for remedy.

Identifying nominals: Many (but not all) nominalizations reveal themselves by their relative length or their endings. For example:

Nominalizations from Verbs		Nominalizations from Adjectives
Verb	Nominal	Adjective	Nominal
maintain	maintenance	difficult	difficulty
reduce	reduction	complex	complexity
act	action	easy	easiness
satisfy	satisfaction	tired	tiredness

Nominalizations from verbs often take on -ance, -ion, or -ment endings. Nominalizations from adjectives may end up with -ness, -ence, or -ity.

Wordiness: Although nominalizations are not always bad (see below), careless use can make sentences wordy and difficult to read, usually without need. Nominalizations tend to be self-perpetuating. Once you start using them, you are almost compelled to keep on using them. Here, for example, one leads to another:

Tiredness among the meeting participants created restlessness.

Unscramble the nominalizations, free the verb and adjective, and the sentence is not only shorter and easier to read, but it is also easier to grasp:

The meeting tired the participants in the meeting and made them restless.

There are other options, such as:

The tired participants in the meeting were restless.

or

The tired people participating in the meeting were restless.

These may not be as efficient as the first revision, but it is still better and more clear than the original, with only one of the three original nominalizations surviving.

Here are two more examples of cascading nominalizations:

When collaboration within faculty ranks becomes attainable, the accomplishment of efficiency and of an improvement in campus morale will come to pass.

A reduction in employee compensation for teaching and research was the result of failure in stimulation of legislation for support for the University.

Nominalizations Spawn Prepositions: These two sentences illustrate another tendency that results from nominalizations. They often spawn prepositional phrases. The reason is that nominalizations are often more abstract—referring to concepts rather than concrete objects or traits—than the verb or adjective form, so that writers feel a need to define with a prepositional phrase. In the last sentence, notice how the nominalizations promote questions in a reader:

A deduction	in what?
in employee compensation	for what?
was the result	of what?
of failure	in what?
in stimulation	of what?
of legislation	for what?

As you read the sentence, you feel as though you are following a trail of cookie crumbs. When you spot a series of prepositional phrases, look to see whether the cause might be excess use of nominalizations.

Underlying Problems: When writers create strings of nominalizations, it is usually because they haven't thought carefully about the subject of the sentence. Nominalizations too often work poorly as subjects because they blur the agent-action relation of normal subjects (concrete objects) and verbs (action). What, for example, is the action in this sentence, and is it contained in the verb?

The appreciation by the audience of the speaker's comments was swift.

There is no action in the verb at all! But can't the audience act?

The audience appreciated the speaker's comments swiftly.

Once the writer had tied up action in the nominalization appreciation, what action was left for the verb? Were there really any alternatives but to use the weaker state of being verb was?

With a real subject, there are many options for real verbs. The audience could not only appreciate. They could also applaud, break out into cheers, stamp their feet in enthusiasm, roar their approval, or march off to burn the villains in effigy!

Verbs that work with appreciation are more limited:

The appreciation was exhuberant.

The appreciation was reported in the newspapers.

The appreciation influenced the critics.

I can improve verb options if I introduce a real person in associated with the appreciation, either before or later in the sentence, but only because there is now a real actor on the stage (so to speak):

The audience's appreciation filled the arena.

The appreciation overwhelmed the spectators.

Revising Nominalizations: To improve sentences built from nominalizations, you must seek a subject capable of acting. With a new subject, you may be able to free the verb or adjective from the nominalization:

The audience appreciated the speaker.

Look once again at this sentence:

A reduction in employee compensation for teaching and research was the result of failure in stimulation of legislation for support for the University.

If we extract legislator as our subject, we night have

When legislators fail to support the University, a reduction in employee compensation for teaching and research was the result.

But can we go further, finding a new subject for the main clause?

When legislators fail to support the University, administration reduces employee compensation...

or, we might try

The administration cut salaries because legislators failed to support the University.

There are many possibilities once we begin to find real subjects. The overall strategy, then, is to find a subject that can act or cause action, a subject that may be hidden in the sentence. A subject that is a nominalized verb may become the most logical verb for a revision. If you free the verb to become an action, the subject might become immediately apparent (who is doing this action?).

Useful Nominalizations: Not all nominalizations can be avoided. Gerunds, nominalizations made by adding ing to verbs, may have taken on relatively precise meaning. Fishing, running, speaking refer to clear actions. They work with a reduced set of verbs, however. Other nominalizations are so much a part of normal speech that we hardly recognize them. You are given a homework assignment to write a report about a surgical operation or about how much pay your expect to earn. At a meeting, we vote on motions, etc.

As you consider your writing, learn to spot nominalizations (endings, prepositional phrases). Assess whether you are creating wordy, difficult reading. If you can free the actions and the actors, your reader will cheer.

Interruptions

Long interruptions between subject and verb:Try to keep subject and verb, or verb and object, close to each other by not imposing long interruptions.

• The decision, made after careful consideration of the political implications and without real regard for the facts, was announced at the press conference.

The subject is far from the verb, and the verb is weak to boot! Revise:

The President announced his decision at the press conference, after considering political implications and ignoring the facts.

Long, Conditional Left Branches: Technical writing may be complex, laying out several conditions that must be met to attain results, for example. If these are stacked into a sentence, it gets hard to read, particularly if they come in a long string before the subject.

• If we think about it and maybe google for evidence, and if the facts seems to warrant an action, and if it doesn't seem too extreme for most of the club members to accept, we might want to change the elections policy.

Break up or rearrange these conditions:

• We should think about evidence to support action. Will members will accept change? If so, maybe we can change the election policy.

Alternatively, move them to the right branch:

• We can change the election policy if evidence, facts, and consensus support change.

Ambiguity from missing Wh-Connections

We use connectors to establish links between words. Which, who, whom, whose, and that are most common. When they are missing, we often can't tell the intended meaning.

• She said she didn't want the bookcase stored in her office.

Does this mean

• She didn't want the bookcase that was stored in her office.

or

• She didn't want someone to store their bookcase in her office.

Such ambiguities may be easy to overlook, so look twice!

(Exercises)