Verbs buried in nouns: what a nominalisation costs and when it earns its place
A nominalisation is a verb turned into a noun, or sometimes into an adjective. It hides the action of a sentence and forces a weaker verb in to carry it. So every nominalisation is suspect and many read better turned back into verbs, but one that names a concept the field uses as its own term, or keeps a concept in focus, keeps its form.
What a nominalisation is
Abstract nouns are words for things that cannot be seen or touched, such as failure, hope or poverty. One kind of abstract noun, the nominalisation, fills reports and leaflets: utilisation, implementation, provision, investigation, completion. A nominalisation turns something, usually a verb, into a noun: when you arrive becomes on your arrival, after paying becomes subsequent to payment, providing care becomes the provision of care and how effective treatment is becomes the effectiveness of treatment. A verb can also be turned into an adjective: to regulate is the verb, a regulation the noun and regulated, as in a regulated process, the adjective. In the broad sense, nominalisation is the transformation of a precise verb into another sentence constituent, usually a noun and sometimes an adjective, and the change into an adjective is also called adjectivalisation. A nominal suffix is an ending that turns a verb or adjective into a noun, as -ment turns agree into agreement. The device that lets a writer talk about actions, as act plus -tion makes action, also lets a writer smother a verb. Ordinary words such as increase and decrease also weaken a sentence when used as nouns: an increase in patients' scores was observed against the patients' scores increased.
Nominalisations dominate scholarly writing, and they are often associated with passive constructions. Students and academic writers tend to nominalise when they write to impress, which produces officious-sounding text. One writer whose target audience in college and graduate school was the professor nominalised verbs, used the passive voice and used as much jargon as possible to sound smart, and the sentences that resulted made the reader perform a great deal of mental gymnastics. Long-winded, roundabout phrasing often introduces nominalisation, which focuses on abstract nouns where the writer could write more directly and economically by focusing on a verb, as in several patients have experienced a reaction against several patients have reacted.
What a nominalisation costs
Verbs are the hearts of statements: they tell the reader about the action or state involved. One writer considers the verb the most important part of a sentence, because it is the part most responsible for carrying the reader forward, and finds that writers often smother verbs by turning them into phrases where a simple action verb would suffice. Indicates is simpler and has more energy than the cumbersome noun phrase is indicative of. The strongest and most direct construction in English assigns the action to a vigorous verb, and three constructions move the action elsewhere and leave a weak verb behind: the passive voice, expletives and nominalisations.
A nominalised verb has lost its verbal force, so the sentence needs another verb to be complete, and that verb is usually weak because the stronger one has been nominalised. The writer has to fill out the syntax with a meaningless verb, and the sentence that results may be perfectly grammatical but is bloated and dull where it could have been short and lively. Verbs used to support nominalisations express little meaning in themselves: the whole spine curvature showed an improvement in 5 patients says that the curvature did some showing, where the whole spine curvature improved in 5 patients says what it did. The verb the writer must add is either weak, a form of to be, or vague, and such verbs have their place in scientific writing, but their overuse weakens language. The imprecise verb that a nominalisation makes grammatically necessary is called a perfunctory verb. Together, the nominalisation and the perfunctory verb form a syntactic circumlocution, like dependent clauses and absolute phrases. A perfunctory verb could be described as a semantic distraction, marked by imprecision and a non-professional tone, but naming the syntactic pattern shows the underlying cause of the distraction and, with it, how to revise it.
Because most sentences need a verb, nominalisations take extra words to say the same thing, and like passive verbs, too many of them make writing dull and heavy going. They can force a sentence to accommodate them through grammatical changes, additions and deletions that interfere with comprehension, so removing them lets the sentence be written more economically and clearly. Nominalisations are among the grammatical constructs of science and medical writing that make the reader perform mental gymnastics to discover the actors and the action of a sentence. Nominalisation is a key flag of dense writing, and nominalisations hide the action.
Six uses of nominalisations are problematic.
- It needs a new, weaker verb. The surgeon placed the sutures across the wound against the surgeon sutured the wound.
- It makes a sentence wordy and hard to understand. There was a review of the case and a finding by the committee, but no explanation was offered for the decision to retain the physician against the committee reviewed and ruled on the case but did not explain why it decided to retain the physician.
- As a direct object, it turns a concrete image into an abstract concept. In the nurse conducted an examination of the patient, examination is an abstract concept, whereas the patient of the nurse examined the patient is a noun the reader can see, and concrete terms communicate better than abstract ones.
- It confuses the relation between actor and action. Ideally the subject causes the action, and a nominalisation rarely does: in his reaction was fast against he reacted quickly, he reacted and the reaction was only fast; in stain removal was complete against stains were removed, the stains were removed and the removal was only complete.
- It attracts further nominalisations. Like potato chips, one is never enough: the confusion of the intern caused her failure on the test against the confused intern failed the test.
- It needs prepositional phrases to make up for the weak verb. The surgeon tied the ligature around the artery to stop the bleeding needs around the artery because the nominalisation ligature took the verb, and the surgeon ligated the artery to stop the bleeding does not.
Finding nominalisations
One writer looks for nominalisations as one of the first things after writing an initial draft. In review, each sentence can be read with three questions: is the action shown in the main verb, if not, where is it, and is it hidden in a nominalisation?
Many nominalisations can be recognised by an ending such as -tion or -ment, though not every nominalised word takes these forms. The endings -ion, -ence and -al are cues as well. When a verb is nominalised, the new word often has a distinctive ending:
| Ending | Nominalisation | Original verb |
|---|---|---|
| -act | reaction, contraction | react, contract |
| -age | package, passage | pack, pass |
| -al | removal, refusal | remove, refuse |
| -ance | assistance, variance | assist, vary |
| -ee | employee, trustee | employ, trust |
| -ence | conference, dependence | confer, depend |
| -ing | writing, feeding | write, feed |
| -ion | organisation, investigation | organise, investigate |
| -ment | assignment, resentment | assign, resent |
| -ure | failure, enclosure | fail, enclose |
A verb turned into an abstract noun, usually by a nominal suffix, is also called a smothered verb, and each suffix gives the noun it makes a meaning:
| Suffix | Meaning | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| -age | action, state or process | breakage, marriage, package |
| -al | condition or quality | approval, denial |
| -ance, -ence | action, state, condition or quality | acceptance, preference |
| -ation, -tion, -sion | an action or instance of doing that verb | determination, action, decision |
| -ery | a business or trade, behaviour or condition | brewery, tannery |
| -ing | action, state or process | blessing, ending, writing |
| -ment | state, act or condition | agreement, payment |
| -ure | action or resulting state | departure, failure |
Weak, generic verbs are another cue. Replacing a weak, generic verb with the stronger one also makes the meaning more specific: she used a scalpel to cut becomes she cut, samples were taken for testing becomes samples were tested, they made the decision to continue becomes they decided to continue and he performed the surgery becomes he operated. A writer who disguises a verb as a noun must add a form of to be or a vague verb such as conducted, done, indicated, involved, made, obtained, occurred, performed and produced, and the general-purpose verbs that support unnecessary nominalisations include take place, occur, perform, carry out, achieve, effect, accomplish, result, conduct, observe, show and find. Common perfunctory verbs include accomplished, achieved, attained, conducted, contribute to, demonstrated, done, effected, employed, executed, exhibited, experienced, given, implemented, made, obtained, occurred, performed, produced, realised, resulted in, showed, taken and used. The list gives the past participle rather than the stem, because the participle is the most frequent form in the passive voice, as in something was accomplished. Only transitive verbs can be expressed in the passive, so something was functioned is impossible.
Nominalisations often follow it is or it was and there is, there was or there are: there was considerable bleeding after the procedure becomes the patient bled considerably after the procedure. They also collect prepositional phrases: the reduction in the census was caused by the lack of a favourable response by physicians becomes the lack of a favourable physician response reduced the census, and returning to the active verb eliminates four prepositional phrases and shortens the sentence by 38%, from 16 words to 10.
One exercise marks the parts of a sentence before rewriting it: the subject is circled, the verb underlined and the nominalised verb put in parentheses, and the sentence is then rewritten without the nominalisation and shortened where possible without changing the meaning, so that the physician created a solution to the problem becomes the physician solved the problem. The move also runs from the other direction, from a verb to a phrase that uses it as a noun and back: he made a choice (he chose), there was a break in her fever (her fever broke), we had a discussion (we discussed), he gave her a prescription (he prescribed).
Turning a nominalisation back into a verb
The repair is to find the hidden verb and turn it back into a verb. Reading for nominalisations and rescuing the verbs they hide reveals the action of the sentence, and identifying and transforming the verbs that masquerade as wordy nouns saves the reader from wading through noun clutter.
Worked repairs show the verb coming back out of the noun:
- We had a discussion about the matter becomes we discussed the matter, the report made reference to staff shortages becomes the report referred to staff shortages, and the decision was taken by the board becomes the board decided.
- After lunch, we will enter into a discussion of the results becomes after lunch, we will discuss the results, the patients had a preference for the cherry-flavored syrup becomes the patients preferred the cherry-flavored syrup, the patient made an overpayment of $50 becomes the patient overpaid $50, and the statistician made an analysis of the efficacy data becomes the statistician analyzed the efficacy data.
- The epithelial cells exhibit proliferation becomes the epithelial cells proliferate, the development of the index was carried out in the pilot study becomes the index was developed in the pilot study, we conducted comparisons between men and women becomes we compared men and women, and preparation of chromosomal DNA for ribotyping was performed as described by becomes chromosomal DNA was prepared for ribotyping as described by.
- A reader does not need to be told that the writers observed a phenomenon, found a result, saw an increase or undertook an examination: a reduction in potency in both assays was observed becomes the potency in both assays was reduced, and examination of the data was undertaken, using becomes the data were examined, using.
- The physician performed an examination of the patient to make a determination of whether or not surgery would be necessary becomes the physician examined the patient to determine whether surgery was necessary; the quality inspector came to the conclusion that the food product contamination occurred during packaging becomes the quality inspector concluded that the food products were contaminated when they were packaged; this figure provides an illustration of the high-quality results we obtained using this assay method becomes this figure illustrates them; and this paper gives an analysis of the brca-2 gene expression becomes the authors of this paper analysed brca-2 gene expression.
- Often, the challenge is selection of the best assay for inclusion into the secondary screening programme becomes often, the challenge is selecting the best assay to include in the secondary screening programme, and a major impediment to the interpretability of microarray data is the current lack of comparability from laboratory to laboratory, resulting in the inability to independently verify published data hides interpret and compare and becomes because microarray data from different laboratories often cannot be compared directly, independently verifying published microarray data is difficult.
- A reformulation of the programme requirements was done for the establishment of a new set of criteria becomes the programme requirements were reformulated to establish a new set of criteria, losing the nouns ending in -ion and -ment and the weak was done at once.
In a draft instruction for an assay to detect microbial contamination, a luminometer is required for measurement and subsequent establishment of ATP levels was repaired by two moves: speaking directly to the person performing the assay, and rescuing the verbs measure and establish. The result was you will need a luminometer to measure luminescence and establish ATP levels.
Removing a nominalisation and changing the voice are separate edits, and a sentence can take either or both. Inhibition of HIV replication is induced by antiretroviral therapy can lose the nominalisation alone, giving HIV replication is inhibited by antiretroviral therapy, or change to the active as well, giving antiretroviral therapy inhibits HIV replication. Regeneration of the resin bed is achieved by a calcium chloride solution becomes, without the nominalisation but in the passive, the resin bed is regenerated by a calcium chloride solution, and in the active, a calcium chloride solution regenerated the resin bed. A sentence with two nominalisations can lose one or both: the reason an inventory was taken of the drawer was their suspicion of theft becomes the inventory was taken of the drawer because they suspected theft with one removed, and they inventoried the drawer because they suspected theft with both; the committee has every expectation that it will reach a decision becomes the committee expects to reach a decision about that issue, and then the committee expects to decide that issue. There are several limitations in assessing diastolic filling with Doppler echocardiography becomes, without the empty subject and verb but with the nominalisation, Doppler echocardiography has several limitations in assessing diastolic filling, and in the active voice without the first nominalisation, Doppler echocardiography is limited in assessing diastolic filling.
Where nominalisations turn up in a research article
A nominalisation with a perfunctory verb, particularly in the subject and direct object positions, is a common distraction in the experimental sections of a journal article, Materials and Methods and Results, and is less obvious in the conceptual sections, Introduction and Discussion.
The most typical nominalisation turns a precise verb into the subject of the sentence. In Materials and Methods, the isolation of the tertiary component was accomplished by the following becomes the tertiary component was isolated by the following. Nominalising isolated into isolation made the perfunctory accomplished grammatically necessary, and de-nominalisation buys precision, because isolated replaces accomplished, and concision, because the perfunctory verb and the preposition of go and the revision has three fewer words. Over-use of perfunctory verbs also produces synonymous verbs, each with a slightly different connotation, especially in Materials and Methods, where the succession of methods forces the action verbs to repeat.
In Results, a precise verb is nominalised into the direct object: Compound A caused a significant inhibition of leukotriene synthesis becomes Compound A significantly inhibited leukotriene synthesis. Inhibited is clear and direct where caused a significant inhibition is indirect; nominalising inhibited into inhibition made the perfunctory caused necessary, and caused may not at first seem perfunctory, but it is when compared with inhibited. The three-word difference between the two versions marks the original as a circumlocution.
In an Introduction stating a research hypothesis, the precise verb can sit as a gerund object inside a prepositional phrase: the erythrocyte may function by supplying developing tissues with linolenic acid becomes the erythrocyte may supply developing tissues with linolenic acid. Supply, as the gerund object of by, made the perfunctory function necessary, and de-nominalisation removes function and by and reduces the word count from 11 to 9.
In a Discussion stating a limitation, the verb becomes an adjective: baseline counts could contribute to altered haematocrit becomes baseline counts could alter haematocrit. Turning the verb alter into the adjectival participle altered made the perfunctory phrasal verb contribute to necessary for the sentence to be grammatical; a phrasal verb consists of a verb and a preposition-like word whose to cannot be moved away from the verb, and de-adjectivalisation deletes contribute to.
In every one of these examples de-nominalisation or de-adjectivalisation eliminates the perfunctory verb, which is why the name of the pattern, nominalisation plus perfunctory verb, is a cue to its revision.
When a nominalisation earns its place
Nominalisations are not always bad, though in Strunk and White's phrase all are suspect, and not all of them should be corrected. The qualification matters particularly in science and medical writing, where new terms are coined continuously and an editor has to consider how the language evolves and the specialised vocabulary of the audience. Gene expression contains the nominalisation expression, from express, but it has a specific, well-understood meaning in scientific circles and should not be edited to remove the nominalisation; a writer who removes it will seem unfamiliar with the science to scientific readers and will lose credibility as a knowledgeable source.
A nominalisation can appropriately be used for:
- Naming an idea expressed only as a nominalisation, such as a clinical rotation or an advanced directive.
- Naming a subject that refers to the previous sentence, as in we analysed the data. This analysis indicated that the treatment was effective.
- Naming what would otherwise be the object of a verb, as in the physician did not understand either the patient's intentions or his meaning, compared with the physician did not understand either what the patient intended or what he meant.
Nominalisation also results from thematic focus, which places the conceptual topic of a sentence, rather than the agents responsible for the action, in the subject position, and it contributes to an academic, formal, descriptive style, as in nominalisation is the transformation of a precise verb into another sentence constituent. Where the nominalised subject is thematically focused on the conventional usage of a discipline, the nominalisation with a perfunctory verb such as perform may be preferred: in situ hybridisation was performed rather than cells were in situ hybridised. A writer who wants to focus on an abstract concept, such as uniform distribution, will often need an abstract noun with a roundabout structure to keep the stress on that concept, as in … was then distributed uniformly. The uniform distribution had been brought about by …. Even so, a text is likely to be more economical and more readable with every unnecessary nominalisation supported by a general-purpose verb removed.
What the edit gains
Bringing the action of a sentence out into the open can make science writing more engaging, easier to understand and more likely to capture the reader's interest. Engaged readers are more likely to remember what they read and even to return for more. Reducing or eliminating nominalisations and the passive voice can substantially improve the clarity of a text as well as shortening it, by up to 30% without losing information. For a medical-technical editor of more than 40 years, using the passive voice and nominalisations appropriately, which means removing them when possible, is both the technique used most often and the single most effective way to shorten a text and improve its clarity.
A paragraph of first-aid instruction for a severe neck injury in an athlete carried 5 nominalisations, 3 passive sentences and 111 words. Rewritten with no nominalisations and only 1 passive sentence, it had 81 words and was 27% shorter, and with some further edits it had 71 words, 36% shorter than the first and more easily understood. These constructions take time to learn to recognise, because they are so familiar that writers do not think to question them, but the substantial improvement in shortening and clarifying a text makes the time well spent.