Strong Subjects #2: Eliminate Nominalizations Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Business Writing - Communication

so the second way that we want you to
put in strong subjects is by avoiding
what we what are termed nominalizations
okay the word is big and ugly in and of
itself so hopefully hopefully you'll
remember it it's hard to say
nominalization so what is the
nominalization a nominalization is when
you take a verb and you make it into a
noun let me give you an example so
here's the verb to consider and we're
going to make it into a noun so now I've
made a noun consideration out of my verb
to consider and it's I mean it's not a
person it's not a place it's sort of a
thing right but it's not a very clear
thing and it's certainly not a thing
it's not like you've got some sort of
consideration thing that's over here
doing something actively as you know my
subject doing something with a verb
instead quite honestly it's a Wimpy
subject we want to get rid of it but let
me first put it into a sentence and then
I'll show you how we restructure the
sentence to get rid of that wimpy
nominalization
okay so here the verb to consider has
been made into a noun a nominalization
consideration and the problem with this
there are really two problems with using
sub verbs that have been made into
nominalization subjects and the first
problem that I already mentioned is that
consideration is not really something
doing something else so do I have an
actor of my action in this sentence the
second thing that's a problem with the
sentence is that I generally when you
take a nominalization and and you've got
that verb functioning as a noun you've
created a passive voiced construction
right it makes sense because I don't
know who did what
consideration was given so wimpy lame
yucky let's go ahead and change it so
I'm gonna take out the novelization and
I'm gonna tell you who did what with the
sentence
now I've got a cool sentence this is a
strong sentence with an awesome subject
John John's awesome right clear strong
actor of action and here's my fir
functioning as a verb
John underlined a twice once considered
John considered the proposal so by
taking out the nominalization clarifying
who did what I take my wimpy sentence
and I make it a nice strong sentence