Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns) - Helen Sword

Few mistakes sour good writing like nominalizations, or, as Helen Sword likes to call them, zombie nouns. Zombie nouns transform simple and straightforward prose into verbose and often confusing writing. Keep your nouns away from the elongating nominalizations!

Lesson by Helen Sword, animation by Bran Dougherty-Johnson.

[sameileen]

Spooky. Scary. Nominalizations. Send shivers down your spine

[opnavesea]

yes but they helped me hit that minimum page requirement lol.

[PaszerDye]

Wow, so this is why no one but lawyers read the terms of agreement...

[CoxTH]

But...but...
The inclusion of nominalizations may evoke the impression of professionalism

[dejureclaims]

When I was fourteen, I used nomilisations in creative writing endlessly. I was convinced that being a powerful writer meant using as flowery and abstract a style of prose as possible.

[genisay]

And this is how lawyers, law makers and businesses keep the average person from understanding important things.  We started getting more educated as a general populace, so they had to start making it harder for us to understand the rules of their game. It was just so much easier for them back when we couldn't read.
This stuff is literally like a code you have to learn to be able to translate before it stops looking like just a bunch of words thrown together in random order.
Makes we wish the common people could grade law makers and large businesses like they do in literature class and tell them  "Your ideas are unclear and your word choice defeats your purpose. It will not be accepted until you can clarify your reasoning and meaning."

[YEdwardP]

Nominalization is sometimes necessary when it refers to a single, concise concept.

For example, in protein biology, one may study a protein of interest that can be phosphorylated (a chemical group called a phosphate gets added to it). The addition of this phosphate can upregulate or downregulate the activity of that protein. While multiple kinases may phosphorylate that protein, it doesn't really matter which one did it as long as it was done, because the protein reacts to the phosphate attached to it.

So instead of writing something like: "When PKA, PKC, or the Calcium/calmodulin-dependent serine kinase phosphorylates our protein, they increase its enzymatic activity." we simply say: "the phosphorylation of the protein increases its enzymatic activity."

Nominalization also sometimes reflects a limit in our knowledge. Biochemical experiments can reveal that certain proteins are phosphorylated. But it may not yet be known which of the multiple kinases in the cells performs this action. In such cases there is no "subject" with which to use the active voice and thus one can only refer to "phosphorylation."

That being said, there is a problem with the overuse of the passive voice in scientific articles even in cases where a clear subject is present. Scientists will often prefer to write: "western blot analysis of the phosphorylation state of the protein revealed..." rather than "we analyzed the phosphorylation state using western blot and measured..."

[omargoodman]

"When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail."
While it's usually a bad idea to over-rely on a single writing technique (like nominalization), one must also realize that different readers value different things. A brief overview of the comments of this very video shows several people stating that they prefer the modern passage created by Orwell over the allegorical and subjective original passage from the Bible. Some people *prefer* the technical, exact writing style that has more nominalization. Other people prefer the active, subjective writing that engages them. And each of these writing styles are like different tools that serve different purposes. Just as you wouldn't use a hammer to drill a hole or saw wood, you shouldn't use nominalization in a situation where you want engagement nor should you use overly active, subjective, and metaphorical language when you want technical specificity. But, at the same time, don't overdo it. Even if the job requires a hammer, don't sledgehammer down the whole wall just to drive a nail to hang a painting.

[ihaveagun]

says zombie nouns
shows skeletons in the video

[blahblack]

Laughs in German letter: *he he he, I am in danger*

[rarebeeph]

Orwell's version was actually easier to follow for me, since he compressed all of the examples into one case. That would, however, remove some of the emotional weight.

[BioniclesaurKingt]

1:28 Wait..."nominalization" is itself a nominalization? Vsauce just gave me a word for a word that describes itself, what was it?

[johnbradley]

"Is this a pigeon" meme where the butterfly is technical writing and this video is asking "is this a deliberate attempt to obfuscate?"

[vegangelo_]

Our professor taught us this but did not use the word "nominalization" nor "zombie nouns". He said that we should avoid words with empty meaning or words that can be simplified further, then he explained it and gave examples. We got it.❤❤❤

[katherinebreland]

I actually think that they are a good thing. An abundance of them might do more harm than good but other wise they’re great. They’re an important aspect of writing and can contribute positively to stories. The way sentences are phrased can impact them a great deal and they can help and add many possibilities to writing. They are undoubtedly a good thing and a tool, beneficial to all who know how to use them and potentially disastrous to others.

[Polaris]

AP test documents:
*NERVOUS SWEATING*

[deawinter]

Not that I don't hate unnecessarily nominalization-loaded jargon as much as the next person, but they do seem to have their place? Not in fiction or writing for pleasure, perhaps, but in literature that deals in complex, abstract ideas, nominalization seems like the only way to go. Sure, "globalization" is a mess of suffixes that obscure its meaning, but the nominalization-free definition - "the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale" (which, international is still a nominalization) - is almost as impenetrable, and totally useless for writing a paper on the impact of globalization.

So, sure, avoiding nominalizations might be a good plan if you want to write a compelling book, or even if you want to make sure your news article is accessible to everyone. But if you need to talk about a specific abstract idea, refusing to use the structures our language has for exactly that purpose seems.... silly.

[Webberjo]

I like how clear Helen's voice is, and how there's no odd pops or mouth noises like in other TEDs. It almost sounds like I'm listening to a PBS program.

[LamanKnight]

I wish I could show this to so many people in academia whose works I've had to read. One of the worst offenders I remember was when I was looking up an essay about Edgar Allan Poe's story, "The Purloined Letter." The entire first paragraph of this one essay was chock-full of nominalizations and abstractions, but when I broke it down, the paragraph said nothing more than, "The story is called 'The Purloined Letter' because it has a letter which is purloined in it." And somehow, this was accepted for publication in an academic journal. Sheesh.

[TheJonathanExp]

This video describes every inextricably verbose scientific study I've ever parsed for kernels of wisdom; connivingly obtuse for the heck of it.