Nominalisation: When Verbs-Turned-Nouns Help (and Bury)

English lets you turn a verb into a noun: decide → decision, discuss → discussion, fail → failure. This has a fancy name — nominalisation — and it can make writing either grander or duller. Here's how to tell which. The reason it's worth learning is that this one move is behind a huge amount of writing that sounds serious but says almost nothing — the emails and reports that leave you reading twice and still wondering what actually happened. Once you can spot it, you can choose it on purpose instead of drowning in it.

What it is

You take an action word (a verb) and make it into a thing (a noun):

• We decided quickly. → We made a quick decision.
• They discussed the plan. → They had a discussion about the plan.

Notice how the second version is longer and slower — the action has been frozen into a thing and set on the table like an object. That's the whole trick. Nominalisations often carry tell-tale endings: -tion, -ment, -ance, -ence, -ity, -al, -ure. Train your eye to notice those, and you'll start spotting the move everywhere.

When it buries your meaning

Most of the time, the verb version is livelier and clearer:

• ✗ The cancellation of the trip caused disappointment among the pupils.
• ✓ The pupils were disappointed when the trip was cancelled.

Too many -tion, -ment and -ance nouns make writing heavy and cold. Here's why it goes cold: when you freeze the verb into a noun, the person doing the action often gets pushed out of the sentence altogether. Watch it happen:

1. Students protested about the canteen prices. — clear who, clear action.
2. There was protest about the canteen prices. — the students have vanished; only the event is left.
3. Protest about pricing led to a meeting. — now protest is the subject, and the people are gone unless you invite them back.

That vanishing act is why nominalised writing feels so quiet — nobody in it is doing anything.

The empty helper verbs

There's a giveaway to watch for. When a noun steals the verb's job, a thin, empty verb usually gets dragged in to prop it up — make, take, undertake, carry out, conduct. Set the real verb free and the sentence wakes up:

• made a decision → just decided
• undertook a review → reviewed
• conducted an investigation → investigated
• there was a failure to → we failed to

If a sentence feels lifeless, look for one of those empty helper verbs sitting next to a heavy noun. It's almost always a smothered verb, waiting to be rescued.

When it actually helps

Nominalisation isn't banned — sometimes the noun is genuinely useful, especially to name a whole topic:

Climate change is a serious problem. (here the noun "change" names the whole idea neatly)

In a geography report you want words like urbanisation, deforestation, migration — those nouns are the topics, and naming a whole process once lets you measure it and argue about it. Some nouns have even become words in their own right — communication, leadership, friendship, discovery. You'd never say "our communicating with partners improved." So the goal isn't to hunt down every noun. It's to spot the optional burial — the times a perfectly good verb was standing right there and you covered it up.

An edge case: nominalisation plus the passive

The heaviest, foggiest writing happens when nominalisation teams up with the passive voice — the two travel together and together they bury the meaning completely:

• ✗ An investigation was conducted into the complaint. → ✓ We investigated the complaint.
• ✗ The implementation of the system was carried out by the IT department. → ✓ The IT department set up the system.

When you edit, do a quick scan: highlight the -tion and -ment nouns, look for a companion passive (was conducted, was made, was carried out), and rewrite with a plain active verb and a clear subject. Nine times out of ten the sentence sharpens instantly. Watch out, too, for chains of of: the results of the analysis of the impact of the introduction of… Three or four of-phrases in a row almost always flag smothered verbs you should set loose.

A second test: read it aloud

If the endings and helper verbs feel like a lot to remember, there's a simpler test that catches most of the damage: read the sentence aloud and ask whether you can hear a real person doing something. If you can, and your meaning still lands, keep the verb — you're fine. If the sentence just sits there, cold and still, with no one moving in it, you've probably buried a verb inside a noun. Try this pair aloud. "The utilisation of the equipment resulted in the completion of the task" — nobody is doing anything; it's a polite brick wall. Now: "We used the equipment and finished the task." You can hear people in the second one. That's the difference between writing that breathes and writing that merely sits on the page looking important. The read-aloud test also catches the opposite mistake — being so worried about nouns that you strip out ones you actually need. If climate change or photosynthesis trips off the tongue naturally and names a real thing, leave it be. You're only ever hunting the burial, not the noun.

Why it matters

The real question underneath all this isn't grammar — it's who is doing what, and are you being straight with your reader? Nominalisation lets institutions and nervous writers hide the person responsible. "A decision has been made to reduce the trips" hides who decided; "We've decided to cut the trips" owns it. Readers can smell the difference, and they trust the honest version more. After something goes wrong, "Lessons will be learned" reassures nobody, while "We got the timing wrong, and here's what we'll change" rebuilds trust. So the skill is worth having in both directions: you can write clear, lively prose that sounds like a real person, and you can see through the foggy writing aimed at you. The best method is to draft verb-first — messy, direct, full of people doing things — then add a heavy noun back only where you genuinely need a solid "thing" to hang two or three points on. Energy first, packaging second. Writing that starts from the abstract rarely gets its pulse back.

Quick check

Make it livelier by using the verb:

1. The completion of the homework is expected by Friday.
2. There was an improvement in her marks.
3. An investigation of the bird population was conducted by the class.
4. A decision was made to increase the budget.
5. There was a reduction in the training budget.

Answers

1. Please complete the homework by Friday.
2. Her marks improved.
3. The class investigated the bird population. (a real actor plus a live verb)
4. They decided to increase the budget. (names the actor; drops the passive)
5. We reduced the training budget.

Where next

• Clarity and Concision — keeping writing lively.
• Cutting Wordiness — trimming heavy writing.
• Active or Passive Voice? — another liveliness choice.