There is in the study of language a phenomenon known as nominalization. (That sentence I just wrote is, arguably, an example of it.) The term derives from the Latin noun for noun, nomen, and when overworked, it refers to the habit of building too many sentences with too many nouns. Or better, the habit of too often preferring a noun where a good old-fashioned transitive verb is looking for employment.
Here’s an excellent example of habitual nominalization: My moist eyes were noticeable to me and I wondered whether they were noticeable to her. Let’s be clear from the outset that there is nothing wrong with this sentence, if by that censure we mean some grammatical problem or logical tangle. We could in fact compliment the writer by noticing its balanced arrangement (seven words on one side of the conjunction and eight words on the other) and its parallel elements (both halves of the balanced pattern conclude with the same adjective and a prepositional phrase). One could quarrel over the absence of a comma after the pronoun me (on the ground that when the subjects of two clauses joined by and are different, a comma is usually necessary), but the simple concepts and plain structure of the sentence are enough to override that grammatical statute.
Observe, though, that the conceptual simplicity of the sentence hinges on the logical contrast between the first and last clauses: my moist eyes were noticeable to me and whether they were noticeable to her. This opposition is what the statement is all about, and so we should ask whether the grammatical structure the writer chose is the best one possible. Each of these two clauses employs the verb were, the simple past tense of the infinitive to be. Used as it is here, the verb were is a copulative, which does no more than state an identity, not an action, between a subject and a noun or adjective in its predicate. To say that my moist eyes were noticeable means logically that my moist eyes were something noticeable. An adjective is really just a noun in a different form (traditional grammar books, in fact, used to refer to both as substances, a noun naming something, and an adjective naming a quality of it). The sentence, therefore, involves two entities (moist eyes and something noticeable) but no action. It’s right here that we can see the enfeebling effects of nominalization.
To identify one thing with something else is to make a statement about the state of being of that thing: to describe or define it rather than say what it is doing. We cannot write well without describing and defining what we are talking about, but when that practice becomes a rigorous habit (as it has in much professional writing), we preclude the vivid presence and lively impression that could otherwise carry our ideas to the reader. What would happen to our example sentence, for instance, if we converted the predicate adjective noticeable into its corresponding transitive verb? With a few simple changes to the pronouns, we could produce this revision: I noticed my moist eyes and I wondered whether she noticed them too. Or this: I noticed my eyes were moist and I wondered whether she noticed too. Or this: I noticed my eyes moist and I wondered whether she noticed that too. Each of these revisions points up the logical contrast by means of the transitive verb noticed, and that is why they strike us as more active and vivifying realities.
Our reader is interested in what’s happening: what is doing what to what. Not every sentence we compose can employ a transitive verb, and nominalization in itself is not the problem. The habit of nominalization, however, is a troublemaker. It assembles many a weak and uninteresting passage because all those nouns and adjectives work against the reader’s otherwise unaffected frame of mind, the natural curiosity we all have about what’s going on in the world. Look for nouns and adjectives and forms of the verb to be, give them all something to do, and watch what happens.
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