It is often said that one of the distinguishing features of modern writing is a heavy dependence on nouns, and the implication usually is that this is one of the more unfortunate features. Nouns seem to have flourished at the expense of verbs and adjectives, and the result, say critics of the trend, has been to make English prose "flabby" or "flaccid" and to encourage vague and generalized thinking.The nouns that these critics complain about are not the kind that refer to objects, creatures, or people or to feelings and conditions that have a discernible existence; nobody objects to words such as cat, dog, home, file, folder, computer, machine, anger, sloth, desire, or even defibrillator and psoriasis. The alleged villains are words such as consideration, experimentation, accountability, sustainability, suspension, furtherance, maintenance, and incidence. None of these words is particularly unusual or difficult to understand, but, in addition to containing many syllables, they all describe activities or states that are abstract or generalized. If students or scientists conduct an experiment, they do so at a particular time and in a particular place using particular instruments and materials; experimentation is much less specific and can cover experiments that take place anytime and anywhere. Not even the severest critics suggest that abstract nouns are bad in themselves or that we can manage without them. We need at times to be able to distance ourselves from the particular, and we need words that enable us to discuss things in general terms. It is not their use but their overuse, critics argue, that is detrimental to good style.The results of using too many abstract nouns are evident in the final example sentence of the preceding subsection. In it we read of "the formulation and implementation of development policies basically following principles of functional representation." Not only is that phrase a terrible mouthful, it never actually seems to touch down on mother earth. It gives no sense of people actually doing things, speaking, or thinking. Instead, it seems to place the activity it is describing in some disembodied realm where formulation and implementation take place almost of their own accord, without any actual person being present to do any formulating or implementing. That may not have been the impression the writer intended to give, but that is how the reader may view the situation. This is why, consciously or unconsciously, people sometimes slip into this kind of writing when they have something to conceal or do not want to take responsibility for something—a fact that political commentators have not been slow to notice.Where abstract nouns are overused, verbs are almost always underused. It is not difficult to see why. A great many of the nouns that have been cited in the previous paragraphs derive from verbs. Consideration means "the act of considering" or "a thing to be considered"; formulation, "the act of formulating" or "a particular way of formulating an idea or statement"; and so on. If a sentence contains a noun of this type, it does not need to contain the verb that corresponds to that noun. For this very reason critics complain that nouns are made to do all the work. And, if a sentence is unwieldy or too vague because it contains too many nouns of this type, the best solution, in most cases, is to replace the noun by the verb to which it corresponds.Let us see how this works in practice:If accreditation and authentication of users are not properly performed, unauthorized people may be able to access the network. In the first clause of this sentence, the important conveyors of meaning are the abstract nouns accreditation and authentication. The verb perform is simply there as a prop to the nouns; it has no real meaning of its own in this sentence. To perform accreditation means "to accredit"; to perform authentication means "to authenticate." Why not, therefore, use those verbs?If users are not properly accredited and authenticated, unauthorized people may be able to access the network. It is now the verbs accredit and authenticate that are doing the work, that is, carrying the meaning, and the result is a better sentence.Here is another example to analyze:Goods may also suffer deterioration as a result of the improper operation of packaging machines. The "overworked" nouns in this sentence are deterioration and operation. Suffer deterioration is, like perform accreditation, another completely unnecessary expansion of a verb. Nothing at all is gained by not saying Goods may also deteriorate. The second part of the sentence is a good example of how ambiguous abstract nouns can be. Do these packaging machines have operators who sometimes make mistakes, or do they operate automatically and sometimes go wrong? It is impossible to say for certain without more context, although the choice of the adjective improper rather than, say, defective suggests human error. In that case, we might improve the sentence like this:Goods may also deteriorate if packaging machines are not operated properly. The use of the passive voice in this sentence implies that there is an operator. We do not have to construct a clause in which operate is an active verb with, say, people or operators as its subject. That would actually give too much prominence to those who work the machines. The purpose of the original sentence was to link the deterioration of the goods with the machines, not their operators.Alternatively, if we assume or learn from the context that the packaging machines do not need human operators, we might say,Goods may also deteriorate if packaging machines fail to operate properly. Here is a final example of this particular problem:A loss of clarity may result from the proliferation of abstract nouns in sentences. This is indeed true, but there are three abstract nouns in the sentence, loss, clarity, and proliferation. Two of them derive from verbs, and it would be better to say,When abstract nouns proliferate, sentences may lose clarity. That version is considerably crisper than the original, but it has a clipped and rather formal quality that may not fit with everybody's normal style. We could expand and simplify it somewhat to the following:When sentences contain too many abstract nouns, they may become unclear. This version is unsatisfactory because it is not immediately clear whether they, the subject of the main verb, refers to the sentences or the nouns. With a little further adjustment that ambiguity can be removed:Sentences containing too many abstract nouns may be unclear. The simplicity and directness of this version makes the original look positively wordy by comparison.The tendency to strengthen nouns and weaken verbs is apparent in many short phrases that we tend to use without thinking. In most instances, the meaning expressed by the verb-and-noun combinations given in the left-hand column below would be better expressed by the simple verbs in the right-hand column:| conduct an investigation into | investigate | | give consideration to | consider | | give thought to | think about | | make an assessment of | assess | | make preparations for | prepare for | | provide justification for | justify | | show respect for | respect | | subject to scrutiny | scrutinize | | take note of | note | | undertake a study of | study |
Simple verbs seem to be losing ground not only to verb-and-noun phrases but to verb-and-adjective combinations, too. A spokesman during the occupation of Iraq in 2004 remarked that an action "was violative of" the Geneva Convention. Why did he not say that it "violated" the convention? Again, the phrases in the left-hand column below should usually be avoided, and the verbs in the right-hand column preferred:| be deserving of | deserve | | be illustrative of | illustrate | | be indicative of | indicate | | be suggestive of | suggest | | be symbolic of | symbolize |
Another characteristic of modern English that sometimes causes controversy is its tendency to use nouns in front of other nouns, that is, in the position and with the function traditionally reserved for adjectives. (Nouns used in this position are known, technically, as "attributive nouns" or nouns used as modifiers.) In many ways, this is a very useful and necessary feature. It is usually much neater to say that someone is a company director than that he or she is a director of a company, and a help menu on a computer is very different from a helpful menu in a restaurant serving exotic dishes. Some people might complain that the word development in development objectives and measures is usurping the place of the adjective developmental, but others might argue, with good reason, that there are already enough syllables in the phrase without needlessly adding another one.In itself, this use of nouns as modifiers is not a particularly modern characteristic of English. It is easy to think of compound English words made up of two nouns that are of venerable antiquity: treasure chest, pocket handkerchief, tennis racket. Shakespeare has Hamlet refer to himself as a "peasant slave," and Milton writes of the "ocean bed." However, what is new—and often a bone of contention—is the tendency to string more than two words together, as intransportation facility development personnel andaccident warning dissemination directive. It is obviously impossible to replace the nouns that precede the main noun in such compounds with an adjective or even a string of adjectives. The compounds are essentially space-saving devices. Before this kind of multipart noun became fashionable, the only way to express the same idea was to place the modifying nouns after the main noun and link them to it by means of prepositions and other small linking words. Getting rid of the linking words saves space and, perhaps, adds a spurious kind of weight and importance to whatever is being described.We have become accustomed to this kind of writing by reading newspaper headlines. But newspapers have the excuse that they need to grab their readers' attention and have little space to spare. Ordinary writers are not working under the same constraints. Ordinary readers are unlikely to object if the short linking words, such as of and in, are put back in. Indeed, they will usually appreciate the greater clarity ofpersonnel involved in the development of transportation facilities anda directive on the dissemination of accident warnings. The more extended versions have the additional advantage that the key word, the noun that is functioning as a noun and not as a modifier, is placed first, not last. Moreover, there is sometimes a chance of ambiguity when nouns are placed one in front of the other. It is obvious that an automobile parts salesperson sells automobile parts, but does an accident warning warn you that an accident has taken place or warn you that there is a danger that an accident might take place? Without context, it is impossible to be quite sure.Where one of the nouns in a string is a word that might, in other circumstances, have a different grammatical function—say, a present participle or an adjective—then the danger is greater. A sign outside an office building in a town in Great Britain reads Youth Offending Team. It conjures up a ludicrous image of a youngster making rude gestures at the opposing side in a sports event, or of a group of workers who devote their time to insulting young people. It actually refers to a team of social workers who deal with young people who commit criminal offenses. The person who coined the phrase clearly had no feeling for language and no real sense of the ridiculous.There is also potential for sometimes comic misunderstanding when an ordinary adjective heads up a string of nouns waiting in line. Is a large automobile parts salesperson a seller of large automobile parts or a large person who sells ordinary-sized automobile parts for a living? Is a green product development engineer inexperienced, extraterrestrial, or developing environmentally friendly merchandise?Noun strings present a test of your feeling for language. Written language has to be crystal clear because there is no speaking voice to interpret it. If you link more than two nouns together in a string of this kind, examine the result closely and critically. If you cannot be absolutely sure that the reader will be able to understand what you mean, put the linking words back in.
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