The Little Red Schoolhouse
Session Two
The Grammar of Clarity:
Characters and Actions
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Characters and Actions
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A
Integrating all the existing islands of automation requires a structured approach with
consideration of not just the physical problems associated with linking different
computer-based technologies, but also the relative importance of these technologies to
overall business strategy and the impact of their integration on the business
environment. Bridging “islands” together for an effective integrated system and
meeting the objective of maximum benefits at minimum cost require achievement of
three benchmarks on the part of any integration program: identification of highleverage technical processes, functions, and activities; maximum effectiveness in the
use of other systems’ assets already in place or in development; full exploitation of
opportunities for performance improvement through integration of islands of
automation system elements.
B
Too precise a specification of information processing requirements incurs the risk of
overestimation resulting in unused capacity or inefficient use of costly resources or of
underestimation leading to ineffectiveness or other inefficiencies. Too little precision in
specifying needed information processing capacity gives no guidance with respect to the
means for the procurement of the needed resources. There may be an optimal degree of
precision in providing the decision-maker with the flexibility to adapt to needs.
C
To obligate a corporation upon a contract to another party, it must be proven that the
contract was its act, whether by corporate action, that of an authorized agent, or by
adoption or ratification, and such ratification will be implied by the acquiescence or
the acceptance of the benefits of such contract, it being essential to implied
ratification that the acceptance be with knowledge of all pertinent facts.
How do you like reading these passages? List three words you would use to describe
how they feel to you:
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
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Many people say that the passages are hard to read because they have long sentences
and passive verbs. Now they have shorter sentences, and all the verbs are active – but
they’re not much easier to read.
A'
Integrating all the existing islands of automation requires a structured approach. The
approach must include consideration of not just the physical problems associated with
linking different computer-based technologies, but also the relative importance of
these technologies to overall business strategy and the impact of their integration on
the business environment. Bridging “islands” together for an effective integrated
system and meeting the objective of maximum benefits at minimum cost requires
achievement of three benchmarks on the part of any integration program. There must
be identification of high-leverage technical processes, functions, and activities;
maximum effectiveness in the use of other systems’ assets already in place or in
development; and full exploitation of opportunities for performance improvement
through integration of islands of automation system elements.
B'
Too precise a specification of information processing requirements incurs the risk of
overestimation or underestimation. Overestimation results in unused capacity or
inefficient use of costly resources; underestimation leads to ineffectiveness or other
inefficiencies. Too little precision in specifying needed information processing capacity
gives no guidance with respect to the means for the procurement of the needed resources.
There may be an optimal degree of precision in providing the decision-maker with the
flexibility to adapt to needs.
C'
To obligate a corporation upon a contract to another party, the party must prove
that the contract was its act, whether by corporate action, that of an authorized
agent, or by adoption or ratification. A court will infer such ratification from the
acquiescence or the acceptance of the benefits of such contract. It is essential to
implied ratification that the acceptance be with knowledge of all pertinent facts.
D'
L will at all times use its best efforts to provide distributor and his representatives
with accurate technical information, but does not assume responsibility for products
that are packaged and labeled in accordance with that information, nor shall L be
deemed to have made any warranties, expressed or implied, of any nature, about
technical information describing products that are packaged and labeled under this
Agreement.
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The following paragraph is from a scientific article:
1a
The effects reported in this study have one of two explanations. Either the effects of
the congeners themselves upon the central nervous system are direct and
permanent, or there may be a retardation of the metabolism of ethanol by the
congeners so that it has a stronger effect. The probability of the latter is less, because
the observation of the effects occurred well after the blood alcohol concentrations
were immeasurably small.
b
Our results can be explained in one of two ways. Either the congeners themselves
directly and permanently affect the central nervous system, or the congeners retard
the metabolism of ethanol so that it affects the nervous system more strongly.
Retardation is less probable, though, because the effects were observed well after the
blood alcohol concentrations were immeasurably small.
From a student’s ENWR paper:
2a
b
3a
Whereas an explanation of the war’s causes is contained in Lincoln's third
paragraph, the fourth paragraph is the rallying cry to the audience for the
continuation of the struggle.
Whereas in the third paragraph Lincoln explains what caused the war, in the fourth
paragraph he rallies his audience to continue the struggle.
Estimation of peak inflow rates for the sewer system will involve utilization of an
evaluation technique developed by Richard J. Nojai in the early 1980’s.
b
In order to estimate peak inflow rates for the sewer system, we will use an
evaluation technique developed by Richard J. Nojai in the early 1980’s.
c
Peak inflow rates for the sewer system will be estimated using an evaluation
technique developed by Richard J. Nojai in the early 1980’s.
From a legal brief:
4b
b
A’s argument that B’s failure to provide for reduction of the royalty rate upon
expiration of the patent discourages the licensee from challenging the patent does not
apply here.
A has argued that because B provided no way to reduce the royalty rate when the
patent expired, the licensee could not challenge the patent. But that argument does
not apply here.
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5
The following is a relatively un-bureaucratic-sounding piece of bureaucratic prose.
First, diagnose what on the page causes this passage to be so readable for bureaucratic
writing. Pick out the characters and actions, listing them on the lines below. Note that
the crucial actions are expressed in verbs.
Under Federal Law, employees may not lobby any Federal contracting agent or agency
while that agency is considering a university contract proposal. If you must contact your
contracting agent or agency while a proposal is being reviewed, first notify the Vice
President for Research, who must clear all contacts and approve what you intend to discuss
with the agent or agency.
Characters
_________________________________________________________
Actions
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
____________________________
____________________________
____________________________
____________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
____________________________
____________________________
____________________________
____________________________
____________________________
Now, tell the same story using not the verbs but only the nouns made from the verbs:
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In the most readable sentences, the key story
elements, character and action, correspond to the
key sentence elements, subject and verb.
Characters are italicized and subjects are underlined;
actions are bold-faced and verbs are double underlined.
a.
Whereas an explanation of the war’s causes is contained in Lincoln's third
paragraph, the fourth paragraph is the rallying cry to the audience for the
continuation of the struggle.
b.
Whereas in the third paragraph Lincoln explains what caused the war, in the fourth
paragraph he rallies his audience to continue the struggle.
a.
Estimation of peak inflow rates for the sewer system will involve utilization of an
evaluation technique developed by Richard J. Nojai in the early 1980’s.
b.
In order to estimate peak inflow rates for the sewer system, we will use an
evaluation technique developed by Richard J. Nojai in the early 1980’s.
a.
A’s argument that B’s failure to provide for reduction of the royalty rate upon
expiration of the patent discourages the licensee from challenging the patent does
not apply here.
b.
A has argued that because B provided no way to reduce the royalty rate when the
patent expired, the licensee could not challenge the patent. But that argument
does not apply here.
a.
State law provides that use of this elevator is prohibited and egress is limited to
stairs and fire escapes when fire or heavy smoke are observed.
b.
If you see fire or heavy smoke, stay out of the elevator. Use the stairs or fire
escape to get out. It’s the law.
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What you Learned and What you Should Know
This is what you learned in grammar school:
Subject
fixed
Verb
Object
SENTENCE
LEVEL
relationship
Doer
Action
Receiver
This is what you should really know:
fixed
sentence
positions
Subject
movable
story
elements
Character
Verb
Complement
SENTENCE
LEVEL
Action
Here’s the point:




In grammar school, you learned that subjects were doers and actions were
verbs, in other words that story structure and sentence structure must
always correspond.
Now you have to learn that subjects are not necessarily characters and
verbs are not necessarily actions, but that readers understand more easily
when they are.
Although readers prefer that subjects be characters and actions be verbs,
writers can displace actions from verbs by turning them into nouns, and
they can displace characters from subjects by moving them elsewhere or
deleting them altogether.
When your prose departs from the expected correlation between the story
elements and the sentence elements,
• readers will judge your prose to be indirect, abstract, complex, dense,
and unclear
• readers will have to work harder to translate from your words to a story
that they can remember
• readers will have to fill in any missing story elements from their own
knowledge
• readers are more likely to interpret your sentence in a way you did not
expect or want.
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A Scale of Readability
a.
Abco must understand which market segments are likely to grow so that it can not
only forecast future sales, but also identify new threats and new opportunities.
b.
Abco must develop an understanding of the growth of market segments, so that it can
create a forecast of future sales and begin identification of new threats and new
opportunities.
c.
Abco's understanding of market segment growth is the basis for the identification of
new threats and opportunities and the development of forecasts of future sales.
d.
An understanding of growth is the basis for the identification of new threats and
opportunities and the development of forecasts of future sales.
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Exercises
Revise the following sentences so that they are as clear and easy to read as possible.
First find the main characters and then ask what are they doing. Revise so that subjects
are characters and verbs are actions
a. Whereas Lincoln's explanation for the causes of the war appears in the third paragraph,
the fourth paragraph contains the rallying cry to the audience for the continuation of
the struggle.
b. Determination of strong and weak areas in Allied’s R/C documentation is possible
through performance evaluation.
c. The Federalists’ belief that the instability of government was a consequence of popular
democracy was based on their belief in the tendency on the part of factions to further
their self-interest at the expense of the common good.
d. Our estimate is of a 75-80% industry-wide reduction in the introduction of new
chemicals, the base cause for which would be the 20% increase of cost of the Preliminary
Manufacturing Notice. [Hint: "decrease" and "increase" can almost always be
translated into "fewer" and "more."]
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e. A major condition affecting adult reliance on early communicative patterns is the
extent to which the communication has been planned prior to its delivery. Adult
speech behavior takes on many of the characteristics of child language, where the
communication is spontaneous and relatively unpredictable. For example,
spontaneous dialogues and multiparty conversations among adults evidence greater
reliance on developmentally early communicative strategies. Similarly, stream-ofconsciousness writing, casual letter writing, and so on display this reliance. On the
other hand, more planned communicative behavior makes greater use of more
complex structures and of strategies developed later in the child's life. Formal
expository writing, for example, or presidential addresses to the nation display this
kind of speech behavior.
f.
More than for any other organism, at the core of the understanding of homo sapiens
is the study of the cognitive processes at the command of the species. For a very long
time there has been a fascination for probing the variables, real or assumed, that lead
to successful manifestation of creativity, problem solving and decision making, whether
their nature be of the physical environment, the social setting or the individual
attribute. Scientific attempts to measure some of these variables, especially the social
'climate' and the individual's potential capacity to learn and to make use of the
learning in problem solving, are comparatively recent. But the fascination has been so
strong and the effort so great that, just as with other sciences, more knowledge in this
field has been accumulated in this century than in all the previous millennia of man's
existence. To date, the concentration has been on the understanding of the basic
equipment — the brain and nervous system — and the measurement of its capacity as
well as the environment, such as organizational climate. It is only more recently that
attention has turned to the scientific measurement, as distinct from literary
description, of the wide range of different stable characteristic behavior patterns
exhibited by individuals when problem solving or being creative.
One possibility for this neglect is that cognitive style is a more subtle concept than
cognitive capacity, or the many extra-individual variables that facilitate or hamper,
praise or damn, novel thought and action. This is because these later variables,
however hard to measure they may be, seem simpler in their strategic conception: one
end of any relevant measure is judged "good" (e.g. high IQ) and the other end less so
(e.g., shortage of a necessary resource) almost wholly irrespective of specific context. It
is, for instance, not often that low IQ is a positive advantage in problem solving.
Cognitive style is not like this, for any style — given a specific set of circumstances,
type of problem, strategic aim, social climate and individual skill, know-how,
persistence and every other attribute--might just succeed where other styles have not.
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The First and Second Principle
of a Clear and Direct Style
Effective sentences tell a story. Readable sentences match the two essential
elements of a story, character and action, with the two essential elements of a
sentence, subject and verb.

Express central characters as the subjects of verbs.

Express their crucial actions not as nouns, but as verbs.

Between those two, the first takes precedence.
fixed
sentence
positions
Subject
movable
story
elements
Character
Verb
Complement
SENTENCE
LEVEL
Action
a.
Smith proved that Jones had failed to improve the property, but the Court held that
Jones had not breached their agreement.
b.
Smith offered proof of Jones' failure in regard to improvement of the property, but the
Court issued a holding that Jones had not committed any breach of their agreement.
c.
Smith's proof of Jones' failure in improving the property resulted in the Court's
holding that there was no breach of the agreement on the part of Jones.
d.
The holding was that there was an absence of proof of a failure in the improvement of
the property and so there was no breach of the agreement.
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What follows is the text of an actual automobile recall letter. We omit the final
paragraph asking the reader to bring her car in.
(1)
A defect which involves the possible failure of a frame
(2)
support plate may exist on your vehicle. This plate (front
(3)
suspension pivot bar support plate) connects a portion of the
(4)
front suspension to the vehicle frame, and its failure could
(5)
affect vehicle directional control, particularly during heavy
(6)
brake application. In addition, your vehicle may require
(7)
adjustment service to the hood secondary catch system. The
(8)
secondary catch may be misaligned so that the hood may not be
(9)
adequately restrained to prevent hood fly-up in the event the
(10)
primary catch is inadvertently left unengaged. Sudden hood
(11)
fly-up beyond the secondary catch while driving could impair
(12)
driver visibility. In certain circumstances, occurrence of
(13)
either of the above conditions could result in vehicle crash
(14)
without prior warning.
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Verbs Actions as Nouns
(1)
Actions as Verbs
involves
failure
(1)
(2)
may exist
(3)
connects
fail
connect
failure
fail
(5)
directional control
not steer
(6)
brake application
brake
adjustment service
adjust
(4)
(5)
(6)
could affect
may require
(7)
(8)
may be misaligned
not align
(9)
may not be restrained
not restrained
(9)
to prevent
not prevent
fly-up
(9)
(10)
is left unengaged
fly up
not engage
(11)
fly-up
fly up
(11)
driving
drive
(12)
visibility
not see
(12)
occurrence
occur
(13)
crash
crash
(14)
warning
warning
(11)
(13)
could impair
could result
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(1)
(2)
A defect which involves the possible failure of a frame support plate
may exist on your vehicle. This plate (front suspension pivot bar
support plate) connects a portion of the front suspension to the
vehicle frame, . . .
Character
Action
____________________
____________________
____________________
has defect
fail
connect
. . . and its failure could affect vehicle directional control,
particularly during heavy brake application.
____________________
____________________
____________________
(3)
In addition, your vehicle may require adjustment service to the hood
secondary catch system. The secondary catch may be misaligned. . .
____________________
____________________
(4)
fly up
drive
not see
In certain circumstances, occurrence of either of the above conditions
could result in vehicle crash without prior warning.
____________________
____________________
____________________
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not engage
not restrain
fly up
Sudden hood fly-up beyond the secondary catch while driving could
impair driver visibility.
____________________
____________________
____________________
(6)
adjust
not align
. . . so that the hood may not be adequately restrained to prevent
hood fly-up in the event the primary latch is inadvertently left
unengaged.
____________________
____________________
____________________
(5)
fail
not steer
brake
occur
crash
warn
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When a writer uses nominalizations to express the key actions in her story, the
grammar will allow her simply to drop out all the characters. Then, when we try to
read or edit her prose, we often cannot tell who does what.
a7
If there could be the presentation of data that would indicate that the
representation of the status of the problem was accurate, then a decision
could be made.
b.
If [
] presents data that would indicate that [
the status of the problem, [
] could decide. . . .
] accurately represented
In too many cases, writers use nominalizations out of habit or because they
misjudge their readers or don’t fully understand their material. But sometimes
they use nominalizations for other reasons – for example, to shift the reader’s
attention away from the agents of the actions.
7
a.
The public has increasingly resisted allowing the chemical industry to build
new hazardous waste facilities near population centers. This problem is
complicated even further because the public does not trust us, believing that
the few examples where the industry improperly managed hazardous waste
represent the waste disposal rule rather than the exception. We must begin
an extensive campaign to change the way the public perceives us. At the
moment, we believe that the chemical industry will have to spend more than
$5 m. on this campaign.
b.
There is a growing resistance to allowing new hazardous waste facilities to be
built near population centers. Complicating this problem even further is
public distrust, founded on the notion that the few notorious examples of
improper waste management represent the waste disposal rule rather than
the exception. It will be necessary to initiate an extensive campaign to
change these perceptions. At the moment, it appears that the cost of such a
campaign could be in excess of $5 m.
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Who’s Responsible?
If you express crucial actions as verbs, you face a second question: who is
responsible for that action? – whom do you want to present as the central actor?
Writers have to establish responsibility in all kinds of writing. You can do so most
clearly by making the responsible agent the subject of verbs that express key
actions in the story.
8The question of who is or is not responsible becomes especially important when a
text is destined for the public. Here’s ex-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
on an incident in the Persian Gulf, when a U.S. ship attacked an Iranian ship
that was caught laying mines in shipping channels. Weinberger is being
interviewed by Jim Lehrer (9/22/87). The question is: Who decided to attack the
Iranian ship and on whose authority?
Lehrer:
Wein.:
Lehrer:
Wein.:
Lehrer:
Wein.:
Lehrer:
Wein.:
Lehrer:
Wein.:
Lehrer:
Wein.:
Lehrer:
Wein.:
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And the attack [on an Iranian ship laying mines] was carried out –
– Yes, by helicopters.
Who decided to engage them? And what was the authority for –
– Hostile action was taken –
Laying mines?
– my yes, laying mines in proximity to our ships is a hostile action,
and once the Iranian ship had taken this hostile action the
decision had to be made quickly and it was made and steps were
taken.
The decision was made?
Yes, once there was a hostile action, the decision had to be made
immediately and in response to that action.
And the authority for the decision?
Well, you don’t want decisions like this to have to go through in
box after in box. The decision had to be made quickly on the spot,
and it was made, and the right people were notified. . . and the
President was briefed thoroughly. . . .
[continuing the discussion of notification ]. . . and the Congress?
We are following the notification provisions of the War Powers Act,
notifying Congress in more detail than the act requires. I notified
the Congressional leadership –
– Congressional leaders?–
– the top members. I called four, got two. Other members of the
department notified other members. . . .
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9Here is an example of texts composed specifically for private and public
consumption. Compare the difference between two different versions of the story
of a fire. The first version is an internal letter in which the person investigating
an accident explains how it happened and suggests that the company blame the
accident on a faulty excess flow valve (which was an important link in the chain
of causes). Note how the author makes it clear that "C" and "D" (who are
employees of the insured company) are partlyresponsible for the accident.
a.
At approximately 3:55 o'clock a.m. on the morning of Saturday, July 30,
1983, an explosion and fire occurred at the plant in an area where railroad
tank cars are loaded with vinyl chloride for shipment. The fire seriously
burned C, an F employee involved in the vinyl chloride loading operation, and
seriously, but less severely, burned L, a fellow employee loading caustic at a
loading rack approximately 15 to 20 yards away. The fire originated at tank
car ABCD 96 and spread to an adjacent car HIJK 74. Your insured suffered
some $950,000.00 in damages as a result of the fire.
The theory best supported by the physical evidence is that C mistakenly
disconnected the south loading hose attached to ABCD 96 without first
closing its intake valve, thus permitting vinyl chloride to escape from the
tank car into the atmosphere when the tank car's excess flow valves failed to
function. This theory is supported by a number of factors: List of factors.
Recall that C relieved D who had been loading the cars with vinyl
chloride. It is possible that D did not communicate with C regarding what
stage of the loading procedures D had arrived at prior to the time C relieved
him, or that D communicated incorrect information to C regarding what stage
of the loading procedures D had arrived at prior to his relief by C.
Now compare the public version of the story, which tries to lay the blame on the
manufacturer of the excess flow valves:
b.
On or about July 30, 1983, at approximately 3:55 a.m., an explosion and
fire occurred at the F plant located on Road in City. The explosion and fire
occurred in an area of the plant where railroad tank cars are loaded with
vinyl chloride and caustic for shipment. The explosion and fire originated as
tank car ABCD 96 was being prepared for transit. The loading line connected
to the south angle valve of tank car ABCD 96 either ruptured or became
prematurely disconnected, allowing the release of highly flammable vinyl
chloride onto the loading rack area, even though the tank car was equipped
with excess flow valves that were intended to prevent this type of product
loss. The vinyl chloride ignited causing this explosion and fire.
How would you tell this story if you were the manufacturer of the excess flow
valve?
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10The issue of responsibility is important in business writing of all types. This
excerpt is taken from a construction contract. Drafted by a lawyer, it was
approved and signed by an officer in a development company and by the owner of
a construction company. Once signed, agreements like this one become instruction
manuals for employees who must carry out the provisions of the agreement. Which
version is likely to be a successful instruction manual?
a.
Work shall not be deemed ready for Abco’s written acceptance until
completion of the work indicated on said list. Upon said completion, Abco
shall again inspect the Work, and if satisfied, shall issue Contractor a written
certificate indicating acceptance of the Work. Before issuance of the final
certificate, evidence satisfactory to Abco must be submitted to it showing that
all payrolls, material bills and other indebtedness connected with the Work
for which Abco has paid have been paid by Contractor or its subcontractors.
Thereupon, Contractor shall be paid the balance of any amount owing to
Contractor including the retained amount, if any, referred to in Paragraph
6.02(c), but such payment shall not alter or amend the terms of any warranty
provided herein.
b.
Work shall not be deemed ready for Abco’s written acceptance until
Contractor has completed the work indicated on said list. When the
Contractor has completed the Work, Abco shall again inspect it. If Abco is
satisfied with the Work, it shall issue Contractor a written certificate
indicating that it has accepted the Work. Before Abco issues the final
certificate to Contractor, Contractor must submit evidence satisfactory to
Abco that Contractor or its subcontractors have paid all payrolls, material
bills and other indebtedness connected with the Work for which Abco has
paid. Thereupon, Abco shall pay Contractor the balance of any amount owing
to Contractor including the retained amount, if any, referred to in Paragraph
6.02(c). However such payment shall not alter or amend the terms of any
warranty provided herein.
When giving instructions, make the subject of each sentence the
person responsible for carrying out its key actions.
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Complication #1
Which Character?
Most stories have more than one character. If you make sure that all your
subjects are characters, you still have to decide which character best serves your
story.
11
a.
Once upon a time, Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the woods.
b.
Once upon a time, the Wolf was lurking behind a tree in the woods.
c.
Once upon a time, Gramma was home in bed, wondering where lunch was.
12
a.
HIllary Clinton prepared the document that Susan McDougal used to defraud
the government in the Whitewater matter.
b.
Susan McDougal used a document prepared by Hillary Clinton to defraud the
government in the Whitewater matter.
13
a.
Charlottesville is losing its tax base to Albemarle County.
b.
Albemarle County is increasing its tax base at Charlottesville’s expense.
c.
The tax base is moving to Albemarle County at Charlottesville’s expense.
14
a.
You are unclear and disorganized.
b.
Your paper is unclear and disorganized.
c.
When I read your prose, I have a hard time understanding it and I can’t see
how one part connects to another.
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Complication #2
Which Kind of Character?
Thus far, we have talked about characters as though they were always flesh-andblood persons. But writers often tell stories about objects, institutions, abstract
entities, and even actions expressed in nominalizations.
15
Some nominalizations name familiar concepts that we know so well that we treat them
almost as though they were objects.
Few issues have so divided America as abortion on demand.
A major issue in past elections was the Equal Rights Amendment.
16
Other nominalizations name the special topics of a discipline or profession. For
specialists, these terms of art name concepts as familiar as their friends and families.
They feel very comfortable with stories told about those special concepts, though these
“insider” stories can often defeat the rest of us. This story seems perfectly readable to
management consultants:
Strategic planning can only succeed at Abco if it wins the hearts and minds of line
managers. As a planning exercise builds credibility with the managers closest to the shop
floor, it begins through them to take root in the culture of the organization so that the
planning process is no longer something imposed from above but part of the daily life of the
business. For that reason, the initial plan has to present as little threat to line managers as
possible. It cannot help but disrupt some of their standard ideas and familiar routines. But
if it benefits them personally right from the start — improves their productivity, enhances
their sense of participation in key decisions, promises to enhance those areas of the
business by which they are evaluated —then a plan can help line managers get past those
early, knee-jerk resistance and make them champions for its continued implementation.
These kinds of stories can easily be translated into a version focusing on fleshand-blood characters:
Abco will only succeed with strategic planning if line managers buy in. As the managers
closest to the shop floor begin to believe in a planning exercise, they begin to embed it in the
culture of the organization so that the planning process is no longer something imposed
from above but part of the daily life of the business. For that reason, line manages must see
as little threat as possible in the initial plan. They cannot help but face some disruption in
some of their standard ideas and familiar routines. But if they personally benefit from the
plan right from the start — improve their productivity, feel that they are participating
more fully in key decisions, receive better evaluations because their area of the business is
enhanced — then line managers can get past those early, knee-jerk resistance and become
champions for the continued implementation of strategic planning.
17
A third kind of nominalization names a character created for the particular
purposes of the author:
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The argument is this. The cognitive component of intention exhibits a high
degree of complexity. Intention is temporally divisible into two: prospective
intention and immediate intention. The cognitive function of prospective
intention is the representation of a subject's similar past actions, his current
situation, and his course of future actions. That is, the cognitive component of
prospective intention is a plan. The cognitive function of immediate intention is
the monitoring and guidance of ongoing bodily movement. Taken together these
cognitive mechanisms are highly complex. The folk psychological notion of belief,
however, is an attitude that permits limited complexity of content. Thus the
cognitive component of intention is something other than folk psychological
belief.
Myles Brand (1984), Intending and Acting, MIT Press
These kinds of stories do not always fare so well when we translate them into a
purely agent-action style:
I would argue like this: Whenever you intend anything, you behave in ways that
are cognitively complex. We may divide these ways into two temporal modes:
You intend either prospectively or immediately. When you intend prospectively,
you cognitively represent what you have done similarly in the past, what your
current situation is, and how you intend to act in the future. That is, when you
intend prospectively, you cognitively plan. But when you intend to do something
immediately, you monitor and guide you body as you move it. When we take
these two cognitive components together, we must recognize that they are highly
complex. But when we consider what most of us believe about these matters on
the basis of folk psychology, we realize that we think about them in ways that
are too simple. When we think about the cognitive component of intention, we
have to go beyond folk psychology.
In a passage that does not have all of the peripheral nominalizations but retains
as its main character the nominalization prospective and immediate intention, the
abstract character seems to be the right approach:
My argument is this. The cognitive component of intention is quite complex. It is
temporally divisible into two: prospective and immediate. The cognitive function
of prospective intention represents our current situation, how we have similarly
acted in the past, and how we will act in the future. That is, the cognitive
component of prospective intention lets us plan ahead. On the other hand, the
cognitive function of immediate intention monitors and guides our body as we
move it. Taken together these cognitive mechanisms are too complex for us to
explain by folk psychological notions alone.
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Some Vocabulary: Actions and Verbs
Verbs have traditionally been defined as “action words.” Nevertheless, nouns can
also convey action, can even hide primary actions within them. In the sentence
below, the crucial actions of the story – the answer to the question “What’s really
going on here?” – are hidden in the boldfaced nouns:
Extensive evaluation of the program will be conducted by the staff in order to achieve
maximum efficiency in client servicing.
All complete English sentences have verbs: in this sentence, “was conducted.”
But the sentence isn’t really about somebody conducting something; it’s about
somebody evaluating something, and it’s about somebody serving somebody else.
And so we rewrite the sentence with the actions in the verbs:
The staff will extensively evaluate the program so that we can serve our clients
most efficiently.
When you express crucial actions and conditions not in verbs but in abstract
nouns, your sentences will be full of polysyllabic words ending in -tion, -ence,
-ment, -act, -ing, etc. When you revise so your crucial actions are in verbs, these
words and all the filler they cart along with them (extra possessives and
prepositions, for example) drop right away.
In order to find out whether your crucial actions are hidden in nouns rather than
standing front and center in verbs, you need to be able to identify the verbs in a
sentence. Here, LRS departs from traditional grammar, so rather than throw the
handbook definition at you, we’ll give you two simple ways to locate verbs:
1. Ask whether the action that the sentence describes takes place in the past,
the present or the future. Whatever the time, change it by adding yesterday
or tomorrow before the sentence. Whatever word (or words) you have to
change is a verb. For example,
Extensive evaluation of the program was conducted by the staff in order to
achieve maximum efficiency in client service.
This refers to the past. Change it to the future:
TOMORROW, extensive evaluation of the program will be conducted by the
staff in order to achieve maximum efficiency in client servicing.
2. Infinitives are verbs. Therefore, another verb occurs after the word “to”:
Extensive evaluation of the program was conducted by the staff in order to
achieve maximum efficiency in client servicing.
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A New Term: Nominalization
The word nominalization defines itself, since it is itself an example of a
nominalization. When you turn a verb into a noun, you nominalize it, creating a
nominalization. When you nominalize “nominalize,” you create the
nominalization “nominalization.” Some examples:
Verb
Nominalization
Verb
Nominalization
investigation
discover
perform
discovery
performance
impair
impairment
investigate
Some verbs do not change their form when we nominalize them:
change
study
change
study
report
review
report
review
And all verbs turn into nouns (called gerunds, way back then) when we add -ing :
She reported the event.
We studied the matter.
They changed their approach.
Her reporting of the event. . .
Our studying the matter. . .
Their changing their approach. . .
Some typical patterns of nominalizations:
Subject
+
The data +
empty verb
+
Nominalization
are
+
proof of thesis.
There
+
is / was
+
Nominalization
There
+
was
+
committee agreement.
Nom.
+
empty logical verb
+
Nominalization
Failure
+
could result
+
in rejection of the budget.
In every case, to edit, we merely turn the nominalization back into a verb, find a
subject for it, and recast the sentence:
Subject
Action
The data
prove
The committee
agreed.
If you
fail, . . .
. . . we
may reject
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your budget.
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A Word about the Passive Voice
Although LRS generally avoids traditional school grammar, you need to know
the difference between active and passive voice. You have probably been told by
English teachers, “Always use active verbs.” That’s not a useful rule. Passive
verbs can create problems for your reader if you use them at the wrong time — if,
for example, a passive verb leads you to hide the agents of actions at the end of
sentences or, worse, to drop them out altogether. But the passive voice exists for
good and useful reasons. You can also create problems for your reader if you use
active verbs instead of passive ones at the wrong time.
For now, remember that readers can follow your story most easily when you use
the active voice to say who’s doing what. In the session on Topics, we’ll give you a
simple principle for deciding when to use the passive voice most effectively.
Definition: Active Voice
In the active voice, the agent of the action is the subject of the sentence, and the
receiver or goal of the action (the action’s object) follows the verb.
subject
verb
object
Some cop
gave me
a ticket.
agent
action
goal
subject
verb
The attorney
forced
agent
action
object
Dr. Smith to acknowledge his mistake.
goal
Definition: Passive Voice
You can tell whether your verbs are passive in two ways. First, in passive voice
the receiver or goal of the action is the subject of the sentence and the agent
appears, if at all, in a prepositional phrase beginning with by:
subject
verb
by-phrase
A ticket
was given to me
by some cop.
goal
action
agent
subject
verb
by-phrase
Dr. Smith
was forced
to acknowledge
his mistake.
by the attorney
goal
agent
action
Second, in passive voice the verb includes a form of “be” and the main verb is in
its participle form:
A ticket was given to me by some cop.
Dr. Smith was forced to acknowledge his mistake by the attorney.
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Once your verb is in the passive voice, you can drop the agent out of the picture
entirely:
Dr. Smith was forced to acknowledge his mistake by the attorney.
Dr. Smith was forced to acknowledge his mistake [
].
The Passive Voice Can Have Negative Consequences. . .
When you use passive verbs where you should use active ones, you’re more likely
to hide crucial actions in nominalizations and bury or omit the agents of those
actions:
If this objective can not be met with the current documentation, then REVISION and
IMPROVEMENT of the manual are needed.
If users can not meet this objective with the current documentation, then the
company will need to revise and improve its manual.
. . . But There Are Some Good Reasons To Use It
Professional writers often make strategic use of the passive voice:
(1) to avoid a long subject.
You might use the passive voice when you need a lot of words to name the agent
and you don’t want to have a long subject. Even though this tends to hide the
agent, shorter subjects generally make clearer sentences.
Darwin’s genius is illuminated by hundreds of letters, both personal and scientific,
to scores of recipients, including leading scientific figures. Mendel, however, is
represented by only ten letters to the botanist Karl Nageli and a handful to his
mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew.
(2) to avoid naming the agent.
You may decide to use passive voice when you don’t know who did it:
Mrs. Peacock was murdered at 6:00 PM last night in the conservatory.
You may also use the passive voice when you don’t want to say who did it
because you don’t want to assign (or admit) responsibility. Kids learn this early:
The glass was broken.
And professional writers use this strategy all the time. Here’s a sentence from a
press release by a company whose employee caused a fire because he was
negligent:
The loading line connected to tank car 96 was disconnected prematurely, allowing
the release of highly flammable vinyl chloride. . . .
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Good Reasons To Use The Passive (cont’d) –
(3) to shift the focus from the agent to another character.
You might use the passive voice when you and your readers don’t care who the
agent of the action might be:
At the trial Dr. Smith was forced to acknowledge that the report was more reliable
than his own diagnosis.
If you are talking about Dr. Smith and his problems, you probably don’t care
about the anonymous trial attorney who made him acknowledge his errors. You
use passive voice to put the main character on center stage.
In scientific and technical prose, it’s often the case that neither you nor your
reader care about or want to focus on who’s doing the action. For instance, we
may know generally who performed the action but don’t care about the identity
of the specific person:
The prosthesis was debrided using a lateral transtrochantic approach.
Someone on the operating team did this, but unless we’re talking a malpractice
suit, we don’t care which one. Likewise, you may be talking about a procedure
you performed, an object you studied, or an apparatus you designed, and you
want to tell its story rather than your own:
The gamma-ray spectra of the specimens were measured. . . . The surface
characteristics were determined. . . . The specimens were mounted. . . .
In this case using active voice would focus too much on the author rather than
the procedure: “I measured. . . . I determined. . . . I mounted. . . .”
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Useful Nominalizations
It may seem that we’ve represented nominalizations as an unalloyed bane to
good writing. In fact, we’ve exaggerated their bad effects in order to make a
point. Not all nominalizations are bad — indeed, some of them are necessary in
good writing. Here are some occasions when you will want to use a
nominalization instead of a verb:

The nominalization is a subject that refers to something in the previous
text:
These arguments all depend on a single untested variable.
This decision may have substantial consequences.

The nominalization names what would be the object of its verb:
I do not understand her intention/what she intends.
We must examine all of their proposals /everything that they propose.

The nominalization names a frequently repeated concept known to all:
Few issues have so divided America as
ABORTION
on DEMAND.
A major issue in past ELECTIONS was the Equal Rights AMENDMENT.

The nominalization is a standard technical term or a bit of insider talk.
Some nominalizations name the standard concepts in a field – technical terms to
those who use them, jargon to outsiders. When a nominalization is a term you
and your reader use all the time (“standard deviation,” “debt financing”), don’t
change it to a verb. Unpacking every insider term can mark you as naive or
outside the circle, and can even make your document harder for an insider to
understand. Typically, you’ll also find that these insider terms act as characters
in your story:
Debt financing raises the rate of return on assets.
Remember, though, that there are relatively few of these technical terms, and
writing on technical, highly-specialized topics should still be clear rather than
turgid. Few writers have the problem of using too few technical terms. The more
common failing is not to distinguish between insider talk and problematic
nominalizations. Here’s a sentence written by a law student:
In a civilian request for discovery in an action involving liability for negligence
by the military, there is a requirement for a showing of a level of need higher than
in other cases.
Four of the first five nominalizations seem to be legitimate insider terms, but two
of the last three are not:
When a civilian REQUESTS discovery in an action involving liability for negligence
by the military, courts REQUIRE a plaintiff to SHOW a higher level of need than in other
cases.
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What Counts as a Character?


Characters are either (a) the agents of actions or (b) the receivers or
objects of actions. Your “default” choice (what you choose when you have
no special reason not to) should be characters who are agents.
Characters can be people, organizations of people, non-human living
things, tangible objects, and even concepts.
In the examples below, character-agents are CAPITALIZED:



a.
READERS understand better and faster when WRITERS express characters as
subjects.
b.
Since 1976, INFORMATION CONCEPTS has offered an Employee Guidance Program
to our employees and their immediate families.
c.
My cat LEONARD jumps off my third-floor balcony.
d.
DUSTY MILLER is a greyish-blue plant that people often use as groundcover.
e.
The APPLE STYLEWRITER II, an ink-jet printer, costs only half as much as the
Personal LaserWriter.
f.
UPWARD MOBILITY is something today’s youth no longer expect.
g.
HEAT-TRANSFER is far more efficient in third-generation boilers.
Although abstract concepts can indeed be characters, you could always tell
these stories with concrete characters instead:
f.
TODAY’S YOUTH no longer expect to be upwardly-mobile.
g.
THIRD-GENERATION BOILERS transfer hear far more efficiently.
You can use a nominalization as a character when it names a tangible
object:
h.
The LEASE AGREEMENT binds you to pay for all damages caused by your cats.
i.
The FRONT SUSPENSION SYSTEM holds the road far better on a Honda than on a
Subaru.
You can use an abstract nominalization as a character if it names a concept
so familiar to both you and your reader that it seems to act in your story.
Normally, the abstract nominalizations which can act as characters are those
with a long history of investigation and discussion in a given field or profession:
j.
INFLATION helps no one but the IRS.
k.
DEBT FINANCING raises the rate of return on assets.
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A Note about Characters and Subjects
If you follow the two principles we’ve learned – characters in subjects and actions in
verbs – then the characters in your sentences will appear before the actions. But the
fact that there is a character before the action doesn’t necessarily mean a sentence is
readable. For a sentence to be readable, the character at or near the beginning the
sentences has to be the subject of that sentence – not a minor part of a complex
subject with a nominalization at its head. Watch out especially for characters that
are possessives attached to a nominalization. For example, in “a” the head word in
the subject is a nominalization and the character is a possessive. In “b,” however, the
whole subject is a character, and that character is the agent of the sentence’s action.
subject
a.
verb
THE COURT’S denial of summary judgment
character
subject
b. THE COURT
character
was without cause.
nominalized action
verb
denied summary judgment without cause.
action
How to Find a Subject
Once you locate the verb, put a who or a what in front of it and ask a question:
1. Locate the verb:
Implementation of the suggested reform could be accomplished by
regulation within the framework of the current Food and Drug Act.
2. Ask a question:
What could be accomplished by regulation within the framework of
the current Food and Drug Act?
3. The answer is the subject:
Implementation of the suggested reform could be accomplished within
the framework of the current Food and Drug act.
If the subjects of your sentences are consistently abstractions (nouns made out of
verbs), and if your verbs are consistently empty verbs such as “do,” “make,”
“occur,” “have,” or “be,” then your style is almost certainly wordy, without force
or energy. Compare:
We can implement the reform by regulation within the framework of
the Food and Drug Act.
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A Further Note on Nominalizations:
Linking Verbs and Hidden Adjectives
You’ll remember that we can nominalize adjectives as well as verbs. This means
that when you revise nominalizations you will turn some of them into adjectives
rather than verbs. So we have to complicate our advice about them just a bit.
Take another look at this excerpt from example #8 (characters are CAPITALIZED,
verbs are underlined, and nominalizations are bold-faced):
a.
The absence of a feeling of affiliation may be a second major contributor to low
parental involvement. A sense of alienation may generate feelings of
intimidation or anger, which engenders such high levels of discomfort and
unconfidence at meetings, compounded by the presence of TEACHERS, GUIDANCE
COUNSELORS, ADMINISTRATORS, and perhaps even PSYCHOLOGISTS, that future visits to
school are discouraged.
b.
PARENTS may also fail to become involved when THEY do not feel affiliated with the
school. When PARENTS feel like outsiders, THEY may become either intimidated or
angry. When THEY attend a school meeting and confront a conference room full of
TEACHERS, GUIDANCE COUNSELORS, ADMINISTRATORS, and perhaps even PSYCHOLOGISTS,
THEY may become so unconfident and uncomfortable that THEY feel discouraged and
may not return to the school.
When we revise “a” according to LRS principles, the character “parents” becomes
the subject of our sentences. When we put this character up front, a few of our
nominalizations – and only a few – turn into active verbs:
the absence of a feeling
future visits


THEY
THEY.
do not feel
. . may not return
We did indeed add some additional verbs to the passage: to become, do not feel,
feel, may become, may become, feel. But these verbs are all verbs of feeling and
becoming – in other words, they’re linking verbs.
Because this passage talks so much about feelings, we had to change the first
version’s nominalizations into adjectives rather than verbs (characters are
CAPITALIZED, verbs are underlined, and adjectives are italicized ):
b.
PARENTS may also fail to become involved when THEY do not feel affiliated with the
school. When PARENTS feel like outsiders, THEY may become either intimidated or
angry. When THEY attend a school meeting and confront a conference room full of
TEACHERS, GUIDANCE COUNSELORS, ADMINISTRATORS, and perhaps even PSYCHOLOGISTS,
THEY may become so unconfident and uncomfortable that THEY feel discouraged and
may not return to the school.
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Linking Verbs and Hidden Adjectives (cont’d)
Although in some contexts nominalizations like “affiliation” and “intimidation”
could be changed into verbs instead of adjectives, that wouldn’t have made much
sense here (“Parents feel they do not affiliate with the school”).
You now have two additional points to remember about nominalizations:
1. Problematic nominalizations may hide within them not actions which should
be verbs, but conditions which should be adjectives.
2. If your story seems not to have a strong action but instead to be centered on
feeling, being, becoming, growing, appearing, seeming, smelling, looking,
making, or sounding, then when you revise you will probably change your
nominalizations into adjectives.
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Why Start with Subjects and Verbs?
… because story-telling has so many consequences.

You may have been told to use strong verbs.
When you use vague, limp, empty verbs that name only general actions, your
sentences do not tell a vivid story:
I write to call your attention to my résumé
When you use strong verbs that name specific actions, you write sentences that
tell a vivid story:
I write hoping that I can persuade you to give my résumé a
second look.

You may have been told to write specifically, concretely.
When you turn verbs into nouns and delete the characters, you fill a sentence
with abstract nouns:
There has been an affirmative decision in regard to termination of the program.
When you use subjects to name characters and verbs to name their actions, you
write sentences that are more specific and concrete:
Congress decided to terminate the program.

You may have been told not to use too many prepositions.
An evaluation of the program by us is planned in order to achieve greater efficiency
in the servicing of clients.
When you express actions in verbs instead of in nominalizations, you eliminate
many prepositional phrases:
We plan to evaluate the program so that we can serve clients better.

You may have been told to order your ideas logically.
When you turn verbs into nouns and then chain them into phrases, you can
confuse the logical sequence of the actions:
Decisions in regard to administration of medication despite inability of irrational
patients appearing in Trauma Centers to provide legal consent rest with physicians
alone.
When you use subjects to name characters and verbs to name their actions, you
are more likely to write sentences that make the sequence of your ideas clear.
When a patient appears in a Trauma Center and behaves so irrationally that he or
she cannot legally consent to treatment, only the physician can decide whether to
administer medication.
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
You may have been told to use connectors to make logical relationships
clearer.
Presentation of more pressing needs by other agencies resulted in our failure to
acquire federal funds, despite intensive lobbying efforts.
When you use verbs instead of nouns, you have to use more logical connectors
such as “because,” “although,” and “if”:
Although we lobbied Congress intensively, we could not acquire federal funds
because other interests presented needs that were more pressing.

You may have been told to get your sentences off to a fast start.
Your reader will predictably find your subjects too long if they consist of one or
more nominalizations:
Disciplinary discharges, voluntary termination which is viewed as a discharge by the
union, and management’s refusal to reinstate the employee after a leave all provide
fertile grounds for the assertion of a mental illness claim.
When you change nominalizations in subjects into verbs, your subject will almost
always be shorter because it will then name one of the characters in your story,
and characters can be named in a word or two:
An employee might assert a claim of mental illness if (1) he or she has been
discharged as a disciplinary action, (2) if he or she has been voluntarily
terminated, but the union views the termination as a discharge, or (3) if
management refuses to reinstate him or her after a leave.

Finally, you may have been told to avoid long sentences.
The final step in Lord Morris’ preparation to introduce the precedents in the
decision is consideration of the idea of conviction for a crime despite the presence
of duress and then immediate pardon for that crime as an unnecessary step which is
in fact injurious for it creates the stigma of the criminal on a potentially blameless (or
at least not criminal) individual.
When you turn nouns back into verbs and find subjects for those new verbs, it is
almost impossible to write a sentence that your reader will think is too long.
Before Lord Morris introduces the precedents, he considers a final issue: If a court
convicts a defendant who acted under duress and then immediately pardons him,
the court may have taken an unnecessary step, a step that may even injure the
defendant, if it stigmatizes him as criminal when he may be blameless.

In short, we can find in one feature of style the source of many other
seemingly unrelated problems. Solve the one problem of style, and you
solve most of the others.
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Q
Quuiicckk &
&D
Diirrttyy R
Reevviissiinngg
Problems with Too Many Nominalizations
As a professional, you’ll revise both your own and others’ work. How do you tell if a
document contains too many nominalizations?
First of all, knowing when you have used too many nominalizations can be difficult,
at least at first: Most of us think our own writing says what we want it to. That’s
why people read their own work aloud – you’re likely to hear all those prepositions
and -ing words. That’s also why professionals always have multiple readers review
their work before it’s considered finished – somebody else can more easily point out
where readers are likely to think that your work is “wordy,” “turgid,” “complex,” or
“abstract.”
When you read and revise your own and others’ work, you can use the following
guidelines to determine if a document contains too many nominalizations:
Diagnose Draw a line under the first six or seven words of each sentence. You may
have a problem if
1. You have not underlined a subject that names a character;
2. You have not underlined a verb that names a specific action;
3. You have underlined a nominalization, unless that nominalization is a
term of art that you want to be a main character or refers back to the verb
of the previous sentence.
Circle all nominalizations and prepositions. You may have a problem if
1. You have circled more than one or two nominalizations per clause;
2. You have circled prepositions that do not refer to place or time (such as
“of,” “by,” or “with”).
Revise Ask “WHO is doing WHAT?” for each main clause:
1. Identify the main action of the sentence – WHAT is going on? If a
sentence contains too many nominalizations, then that main action will
probably be in a noun, so change the noun into a verb.
2. Identify the person, group of persons, thing, or concept – the WHO –
performing the action.
3. Rewrite the sentence around this WHO-WHAT, agent-action pair.
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Too Many Nominalizations: An Example
“Determination of strong and weak areas in documentation is possible through
performance observation. Definition of testing objectives in clear, unambiguous
terms with the possibility of easy measurement is an important part of the process
(Queipo 186).”
Diagnose Draw a line under the first six or seven words of each sentence.
Obtaining representative users and requiring assembly of the model using the manual
provided with the kit is the definition of usability testing. Determination of strong and
weak areas in documentation is possible through performance observation. Definition of
testing objectives in clear, unambiguous terms with the possibility of easy measurement is
an important part of the process (Queipo 186).
You have a problem because
1. You have not underlined subjects that name a character;
2. You have not underlined verbs that name a specific action; and
3. You have underlined nominalizations that are not terms of art and do not
refer back to the verb of the previous sentence.
Alternatively, circle (here, boldface) all nominalizations and prepositions:
Determination of strong and weak areas in documentation is possible through
performance observation. Definition of testing objectives in clear, unambiguous terms
with the possibility of easy measurement is an important part of the process (Queipo
186).
You have a problem because
1. You have circled more than one or two nominalizations per clause, and
2. You have circled prepositions that do not refer to place or time (such as
“of,” “by” or “with”).
Revise 1. WHAT is going on?
2. WHO is performing the action.
3. Rewrite the sentence around this WHO-WHAT, agent-action pair.
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Sentence 1 WHAT
Determination of strong and weak areas in documentation is possible through performance
observation.
WHO
Allied can determine. . . .
Allied observes. . . .
users perform assembly (i.e., assemble). . . .
REVISION
By observing users assemble the model, Allied will be able to determine which parts of its
documentation are strong and which are weak.
Sentence 2 WHAT
Definition of testing objectives in clear, unambiguous terms with the possibility of easy
measurement is an important part of the process (Queipo 186).
WHO
Allied (should) define. . . .
Allied can measure. . . .
REVISION
Allied should also define the objectives for these tests in clear, unambiguous terms which
can be easily measured (Queipo 186).

Note that in order to make this passage clear, we didn’t need to change
every single nominalization into an active verb whose agent precedes it.
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Problems with Too Few Characters
As a professional, you’ll revise both your own and others’ written work. How can you
tell if a document contains too few characters?
At first you may have trouble recognizing that you have used too few characters. So
we offer the same advice in this session as we did in the last: read your writing aloud
or get others to read and critique it.
More specifically, when you read and revise your own and others’ professional
writing, you can use the following guidelines to determine if there is a problem with
too few characters:
Diagnosis 1. Draw a line under the first six or seven words. Are no characters named?
Or, if you do find a character named, is it after the preposition “by” or “of,”
or is it in the possessive?
2. Circle the verbs. Are they unspecific and/or passive – “have,” “make,” “do,”
“be,” “occurs,” “was allowed,” “is needed,” etc.?
3. Underline possessive nouns. Are most of them before nominalizations?
Revision 1. Write down the main action of the sentence – WHAT is going on? Since
obscure sentences often hide their actions in nominalizations, transform
those problematic nominalizations into verbs. Also write down any verbs
that are passive, in their active form.
2. Determine the agent of the action – WHO is performing the action? First
look for the agent among the characters actually named in the sentence.
If that fails, draw on your background knowledge of the context in order
to identify the characters only implied in the sentence. Write down your
WHO-WHAT pairs.
3. Try out a series of logical frames for these character-action, subject-verb
pairs. What you’re actually doing here is using a common set of connector
words to paraphrase the sentence:
Since _______ , _______ .
_______, because _______ .
Although _______ , _______ .
Before/after/when/where _______ , _______ .
Nevertheless/however, _______ .
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Problems with Too Few Characters: An Example
Example [a] Utilization on an unlimited basis is permitted. [b] However, prior EGP
registration is required before any contact with the Legal Referral Service.
Diagnose You have a problem with too few characters because you have
1. Found no human characters in the first seven words: Utilization on an
unlimited basis is permitted.. . . ; However, prior EGP registration is
required. . . .
2. Found that the verbs are not specific and/or passive: is permitted, is.
3. N/A
Revise 1. Write down the main actions of each sentence — WHAT is going on?
Transform problematic nominalizations into verbs, and write down any
verbs that are passive.
WHAT:
WHAT:
utilization

utilize
is permitted

permit
registration

register
requirement

require
contact

contact

use (omit jargon)
2. Determine the agent of the actions (the WHO). Since no characters are
actually named, you have to draw on your background knowledge of the
context in order to identify the character-agents implied in the sentence.
Write down your WHO-WHAT pairs.
WHO:
EMPLOYEES and their IMMEDIATE FAMILIES use
INFORMATION CONCEPTS permits

YOU and your IMMEDIATE FAMILY may use
WHO:
EMPLOYEES register
INFORMATION CONCEPTS requires

YOU must register
WHO:
EMPLOYEES contact

YOU contact
3. Try out a series of logical frames for these character-action, subject-verb
pairs:
[a] You and your immediate family may use the Legal Referral Service on an unlimited
basis. [b] However, you must first register with HG each time you contact the Legal
Referral Service.
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?
“Am I supposed to avoid all nominalizations?”
No. Nominalizations are not “bad” all of the time in all contexts.
In order to help you grasp the principles, we have emphasized the problems with
nominalizations and asked you to revise more rigorously than is strictly necessary. On
the job, it’s unlikely that you’ll always want to unpack every nominalization. We do say
that your default style (how you write when you have no special reason to do otherwise)
should be as transparent as possible. But we also recognize that you have to decide how
clear your style should be in light of your particular situation.
Throughout LRS, we’ll emphasize the clearest and most direct ways of writing while
reminding you that “clear” does not equal “good.” We say a style is “good” when it is the
right style for a specific, appropriate purpose – for example, you might want to be less
than direct when describing the failure of your boss’s pet project – whereas we say a
style is “clear” when it has certain features, such as actions-in-verbs.
In fact, LRS can’t tell you what style to use, since that depends on your particular
purpose, which depends on your specific situation (your readers, the problem you’re
supposed to address, etc.).What LRS can teach you is to control your style. Good writers
know when they need to be clear and when they need to be obscure, and they know how
to make their prose as clear or direct as they want it to be. Unfortunately, most writers
cannot control how clear their style seems to readers, and very few writers control the
full range of style, from the most direct to the most obscure. That’s what LRS is all
about: not writing always in the same way but controlling your style so that you can
write in all of the varied ways you’ll need.
?
“Are all nominalizations unclear?”
Some nominalizations are almost never a problem, no matter what the context:
•
You can nominalize a verb by adding -er. Ignore nominalizations like these:
FARMER
•
DRIVER
BAMBOOZLER
SCULPTOR
Another kind of nominalization names an object that an action brings into being.
Nominalizations like these name concrete things you can point to. Ignore this type of
nominalization, too:
Once I propose X in writing,
I have produced a PROPOSAL.
When I illustrate X with Y,
then Y becomes an ILLUSTRATION.
I build a BUILDING.
I love a LOVER.
Once the appropriate bodies vote to amend the Constitution, it becomes an AMENDMENT.
The kind of nominalization that may cause a problem for readers is the kind that does
not name a tangible thing but refers to an abstraction instead:
Their PROPOSAL of the rule was without substantial reason.
They proposed the rule for no substantial reason.
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An ILLUSTRATION of the means of achieving this effect is necessary.
You must illustrate how to achieve this effect.
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?
“I don’t write in the heavy, abstract style of the “a” passages. Why should I
worry about nominalizations?”
Many students assume that nominalizations aren’t a problem for them. But LRS
presents a more useful strategy than simply hunting down nominalizations.
The lesson of this session concerns more than nominalizations: the lesson is that
effective sentences tell stories in ways that are easy to understand, and that verbs are
one key to telling stories.
First of all, we all fall into nominalizations more than we think: the “bad” examples in
LRS come from all types of documents written by all sorts of writers, students and
professionals alike. Most students slip into nominalizations either because they’re
unclear about their subject matter themselves and their prose reflects this, or because
they are novices in a particular field and are unsure of what their voice should sound
like. We spend so much time on nominalizations because they are so common in all
realms of professional writing and because they’re so hard to overcome.
Second, even if you don’t often use problematic nominalizations, you still have to watch
out for your verbs: are they interesting and active or weak, passive, and tired? Writers
need to choose their verbs carefully and strategically with their particular readers in
mind.
?
“Are you trying to change my style?”
LRS expands your repertoire and enables you to write strategically for any professional
situation. Effective professionals have to adapt their style to the situation. But that
doesn’t mean that your writing has to be mechanical or without your personal stamp.
LRS is not about forcing you to write in any particular way for the rest of your life. LRS
is about learning to be flexible, to recognize your options, to learn something about how
people read and to use this knowledge to get readers to read in the way you want. Once
you know what your options are and once you can anticipate how your readers might
respond to your prose, then you can make strategic decisions about what you want to
accomplish and how you can achieve your goal. To that end, we’re trying out different
styles for practice. If you decide that those options help you write better, fine. If you
and, more importantly, your readers are happy with the way you write, then use LRS to
learn a bit about why your professional writing works as well as it does, and to learn to
give others concrete directions for revising their work on the page.
?
“I’m uneasy that these rules are too mechanical. If I’m just following all of
these rules, what’s left of me in my sentences?”
LRS is not about rules. It’s about principles that help you control a range of styles. You
have to decide how you want to approach your readers, how you want them to
understand what you have to say. Then the LRS principles help you to know how to
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create a style to match your objectives. Style is choice, and LRS is about giving you the
ability to make the choices that best serve your own purposes.
It is true, however, that LRS encourages you to think about the process of writing
mechanically. That’s actually one of its biggest advantages. Because they give you a way
to achieve your goals mechanically, you can apply these principles even when you’re too
close to your draft, when you’ve been though the material once too often, or when you’re
too tired to see your writing with a cold, clear eye. The mechanical part of LRS helps
you to see your own work as your readers will.
Just because LRS offers mechanical procedures, you don’t have to be a mechanical
writer. Rather, LRS principles help you avoid getting lost in the problem of how to
achieve your goals, freeing you up to concentrate on the question of what those goals
should be.
The LRS approach has one more key advantage. Because LRS principles help you focus
on keeping your story straight as you tell it, they also help you to get your story straight
in the first place. Most writers find that LRS principles impose a helpful discipline on
their thinking. When you use LRS principles, you
•
make sure that you are yourself clear about what happens and who is responsible for
the actions;
•
have a story to tell, not just a collection of empty sentences with “to be” verbs;
•
have to decide which objects and concepts are important enough and familiar
enough to your readers that you can treat them as characters in your story.
Eventually, you will find that you have to begin to choose among characters, further
shaping and molding your story to make it yours.
?
“Do all subjects have to be agents?”
No. It is a good idea to make the subject the agent or “doer” of the action. Readers
will generally follow your story more easily if you do express agents in the subject
position. So you should make an “agent-action” style your default style – the style you
use when you have no particular reason to do otherwise.
But when you do have a good reason, you can write clear and effective sentences that do
not have agents as subjects. The subject is a position, the slot in the sentence that
normally comes before the verb and that answers the question you get by putting “who”
or “what” before the verb. Subjects usually come first in clauses, but they do not have to:
Down the street came a truck.
The reason for this decision we cannot understand.
There is a spider in my shirt.
Many writers remember the advice to “get the subject up front.” But that’s as
misleading as the definition of subject as doer. The subject will almost always be up
front, even in the most unclear sentences:
The failure to understand the reason for the decision to terminate the program is a
result of ignorance of the actual processes of the committee.
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What you do want to get up front in the subject position is a character – some person,
object, or concept that is so important to your story and so familiar to your readers that
you want to make it the centerpiece of your story.
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?
“What do I do when I am the agent of the action? My teachers say I should
never use ‘I’ or ‘we’?"
Over the years, students have been given a lot of misleading advice about using “I” and
“we.” Since your default style should use agents as subjects, you should use “I” as your
subject if you have performed the crucial actions in your story and you don’t have a good
reason to do otherwise. The complication is that there might be a number of good
reasons not to. You might want to start your sentence with a character other than
yourself. Or you might be writing in a field that avoids “I” or “we” in order to be
“objective.” In fact, writers in those fields use “I” and “we” all the time – when the action
they write about is one that only they could have performed. When, however, the action
is one that is supposed to turn out the same no matter who performed it – for example,
the actions a scientist performs in the lab – then writers often avoid making themselves
the character in the sentence and put some other character in the subject position.
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Exercises
Homework for the Second Studio Meeting
Revise passages 1-4. Your revisions should not only be clearer and more direct but they
should also have a character and an action verb in the first six or seven words of each clause.
Bring twelve copies of your revisions to the seminar.
1. In America today, innovation on the part of industry is a crucial component in its
survivability.
2. If there is an increase in quantity or change in the items of inventory over the five
years, there must be proof that there was no plan or intention on Abco's part to make
such changes in anticipation of the partial liquidation.
3. During the 1920's, an American policy of nonrecognition prevailed. There was the
feeling that there should be no dealings with communism. With prosperity at home and
a strange experiment being conducted in Russia, there was no interest in recognition.
4. In Oracle there appears an exemplification of a prefiguring of the entire narrative; the
result is a close correspondence between the Biblical account of the resurrection and
that of the protagonist. Also is seen a degree of ambiguity in the treatment of the mythic
materials—a reinterpretation of the sources so that the protagonist's subordination to
the action involved in the creation of the dystopia results.
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5. Local variation in these factors requires that population growth explanations include
allowances for the variety of experience within the general trend. But there is low
agreement among demographers concerning the precise interactions or importance of
these factors. Demographic explanations of these patterns have been limited. Until
recently, for example, stress has been placed on the influence on population growth of
changing patterns of mortality. Such an explanation seems relatively simple because
people's choices have the least influence on mortality. Death from disease is
autonomous. Thus it has been argued, that the decline of bubonic plague in the later
fifteenth and early sixteenth century, and the corresponding lessening of it virulence,
led to a rise in population because the plague no longer regularly culled a prolific
population.
6. The following paragraph is an extreme example of the nominalization process. The
sentences are short and concise, all right, and the passage is probably shorter than any
U.S. history textbook ever written – but notice how much time it takes you, a reader, to
reconstruct the meaning as you go along.
Imagine rewriting this paragraph based on the principles discussed in this session. As
you do so, also keep in mind the following questions: (1) Who or what is the subject of
your expanded sentence? (2) Whose story is being told here? From whose point of view?
Creation. Evolution. Civilization. Exploration. Colonization.
Taxation. Representation? Declaration. Celebration.
Constitutionalization. Election. Inauguration. Succession.
Institutionalization. Conflagration. Migration. Plantation.
Expansion. Destination Manifestation. Annexation. Secession.
Rebellion. Abolition. Emancipation Proclamation.
Assassination. Reconstruction. Industrialization.
Assassination. Invention. Transportation. Urbanization.
Exploitation. Stratification. Assassination. Unionization.
Protection. Regulation. Suffrage extension. Balkanization.
Destruction. League of Nations. Prohibition. Immigration.
Depression. Socialization. Construction. Isolation.
Deteriorization. Penetration. Fission. Annihilation. Radiation.
Polarization. Militarization. Partition. Persecution.
Automation. Failed invasion. Assassination. Investigation.
Division. Demonstration. Mind alteration. Space exploration.
Bra incineration. Obfuscation. Resignation. Elation.
Stupefaction. Abortion. Stagflation. Gas station. Dance-floor
gyration. Computerization. Communication. Deregulation.
Pollution. Deforestation. Kinder, gentler nation. Reunification.
Reconciliation. Verification. Recession. Infomercialization.
Demarcation. Obliteration? Glorification. Conflagration.
Rescue Operation. Nanny tax evasion. Ethnic Cleansing.
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Health care reformation. Investigation. Truth evasion.
Accusation. Wealth accumulation. Impeachment examination.
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7. The following paragraphs are from a packet of materials on substance abuse distributed
to all employees of a large state agency in Arizona. The materials were put together by
agency management in consultation with a committee created by the state to study drug
and alcohol abuse in the public sector workplace. In the paragraphs reproduced below,
the writers discuss the state’s programs for employees who need treatment.
B. TREATMENT
[1] Treatment will occur only in the case of an employee with potential for
further useful service. [2] One of three levels of programs may be entered
should there be an alcohol or drug incident and/or request for assistance:
1. Level One
[3] Level One is the Alcohol and Drug Program (ADP), a 36-hour preventative
education course developed and delivered under contract by the University of
Tempe. [4] The emphasis is on self-responsibility and on being informed of the
causes, symptoms, and effects of alcohol and drug abuse, and of state policies on
substance abuse. [5] Training is provided regarding such topics as
communication, goal setting, and stress education. [6] The orientation is toward
prevention.
2. Level Two
[7] Level Two is reserved for instances of significant abuse and lack of response
to Level One initiatives; it can also be a “holding” program during the wait for
Level Three treatment. [8] Level Two consists of the Assistance and Guidance
Center (AGC) program, of normally four weeks in duration and with meetings
three times per week in group for education about the disease of alcoholism. [9]
Postcare Visits are also part of the Postcare Plan.
3. Level Three
[10] Diagnosis of alcoholism or drug dependency can result in certain
circumstances in placement in other outpatient treatment programs, or in
residential treatment programs, at State expense. [11] For guidelines on this
matter, see attachment B.
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Exercises
8
This letter was written by a student looking for a job. Revise it so that the writer presents
her case more clearly and forcefully:
502 College Avenue #34
State College, PA 61801
April 15, 1995
Ms. Reina Patel
Richard Olmann & Associates
34 West Kingston St.
Columbia, New Jersey 28476
Dear Ms. Patel:
I am most interested in the summer employment position as a draftsperson
about which I learned during our telephone conversation last Tuesday. My
employment in an architect’s office last summer and several years of drafting
classes throughout high school and college make me a uniquely qualified
candidate, one readily able to provide assistance in any of your project
endeavors. I have the necessary skills, education, and ambition to be a
productive addition to your firm.
Last summer I was fortunate enough to be an employee of two architecture
firms, where different methods of generating construction documents were
utilized. Drafting boards were the primary method of choice employed by one
firm, and the concentration of my work execution consisted of drawing,
modifying, annotating, and designing. Conversely, VersaCad software was
primarily employed by the other firm, and my responsibilities included the
entering of elevations, floor plans, and mechanical and electrical plans. These
two experiences and my schooling have provided me with an accumulation of
computing and drafting skills.
Additionally, residing permanently in Amberton has provided me with exposure
to a sample of some of your work in the form of our city hall. The open
triangular plan is an interesting solution to a complex circulation problem
inhering in that town area. This building interested me greatly, and I have
found myself walking amongst its large overhangs on numerous evenings.
Reina Patel
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This awareness of your design philosophy combined with this acquisition of
skills and experiences gives me a unique list of services that could be beneficial
to your distinguished firm. Furthermore, my amiable disposition and
willingness to tackle any sort of problem have served to be a personal asset in
relations with all sorts of people and situations. I will be available for further
discussion of my résumé and other related questions you may have at any time
convenient for you. I am able to begin employment by the 10th of May, and I
can be reached at 814/352-4627 any time before then. I appreciate your time
and am looking forward to discussing how I can be of service to you this
summer.
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9. The following paragraph is from a report written by a consulting firm for a group of
school district administrators, including the superintendent. The consultants suggest
that the school district apply to become a member of the federal Follow Through
Program.
Using the strategies presented in this session, revise the passage below.
[1] The absence of a feeling of affiliation may be a second major contributor to low
parental involvement. [2] A sense of alienation may generate feelings of intimidation or
anger, [3] which engenders such high levels of discomfort and unconfidence at meetings,
compounded by the presence of teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, and
perhaps even psychologists, that future visits to school are discouraged. [4] In addition,
determination of appropriate questions for school personnel may prove difficult, [5] and
research exists which reports that feelings of unease may be affected by perceptions of
too many demands being placed on children. [6] Any or all of these issues may be causal
factors in alienation and the resultant minimal level of involvement and child
achievement.
10. The following passage is classic academic prose. Revise:
The possibility of the development of class-consciousness among the middle class
depends on the synthesis of the ideologies of the dominant class and working class in
their struggle for middle class support. Predictions of any degree of certainty in regard
to the form which this emergent class consciousness may take are at best difficult, but
an historical analysis of the ideological struggle would indicate that among its primary
components would be included elements derived from both the bourgeois-libertarian
tradition and the developing working class program for socialization of production and
the reconstruction of society through collective action. An adequate middle class
ideology would appear therefore to involve a middle class recognition of the necessity of
achieving a reconciliation of the need for adequate socio-economic planning with the
traditional guarantees of civil rights which best can be maintained through the relative
political independence of such groups as the press, the university, and the trade-unions.
LR
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