Helen Sword’s NYT Opinionator essay on “Zombie Nouns” is one of the most profound short essays on writing that I’ve read since at least college. Maybe even high school. I don’t know if that says more about my writing ability or Sword’s:
Take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. You’ve created a new noun: implacability, calibration, cronyism. Sounds impressive, right?
Nouns formed from other parts of speech are called nominalizations. Academics love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats and business writers. I call them “zombie nouns†because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings:
Read the rest of Sword’s essay here. It’s really one of the best practical essays on writing I’ve read in awhile.
Have you read “Style: Towards Clarity & Grace” by Joseph Williams? My advisor bought me a copy when it was time to start writing my dissertation, and it was quite enlightening. It contains a lot of syntactic insights like the advice here regarding nominalizations. Another thing from that book that stuck with me is that most English words come in pairs of synonyms, with one word of Anglo-Saxon origin and one of French/Latin origin. The Anglo words are typically more down-to-earth.