Lights, Camera, Action (Verbs)
If people are doing things in your life, they should be doing things in your sentences.
HACK Recap: For the last Hack, I turned some of my past Hacks into graphics. Please make sure to look at this guide to the word literally that I literally spent half my life creating.
HACK News: I had a great time talking about my teaching experiences and writing hacks with Glenn Leibowitz for his Write with Impact podcast. Check it out for some thoughts on drafting and outlining—and some stories about the glamorous life of a writing instructor.
This week’s Hack: Beware of verbs disguised as nouns.
Consider the difference between these sentences:
Version 1: If you try to avoid insects, you will miss many beloved summer activities.
Version 2: The avoidance of insects will lead to the missing of many beloved summer activities.
In the first version, I have a direct message for my readers: Avoid insects and you’ll miss all the fun.
In the second version, I’m talking about the same series of actions (avoiding insects and missing summer activities). But I’ve hidden those actions in nouns (the avoidance and the missing). By choosing the nouns instead of the corresponding verbs, I’ve removed both the action and the actor from the equation. When you read this version, you don’t know that I’m talking directly to you—and you have to work a bit too hard to figure out who is doing what.
A verb-disguised-as-a-noun (or an adjective or an adverb disguised as a noun) is called a nominalization. If I say, “I made a decision” instead of “I decided,” I’ve turned “decide”(verb) into “a decision”(noun). I now have a nominalization, but I no longer have a strong action verb.
What’s the problem with choosing nouns instead of verbs?
The very wise writing expert Helen Sword calls nominalizations “zombie nouns” that “cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings.” (Note: I highly recommend checking out the article at the link, as well as Professor Sword’s YouTube channel. I was very honored when she used one of my articles as an example in one of her presentations—the writing instructor equivalent of having a rock star sing one of your songs!)
In addition to sucking the life out of your sentences, the inclusion of too many nouns that could be verbs will lead to the writing of an incomprehensible sentence like this one that you are reading right now.
Huh? We can figure out what that sentence means—but we’d rather not. It’s extra work to uncover the hidden verbs (include and write) and to figure out who is doing what.
On the other hand, if we turn those nouns into verbs, we get a sentence that’s easier to follow:
If you include too many nouns that could be verbs, you will write an incomprehensible sentence.
Hiding your verbs can obscure the point you want to highlight. If you hide the key action in a noun, you’re probably going to end up with a weaker verb—and a weaker sentence. Take this sentence, for example:
My boss and I participated in a discussion about my desire for the spending of less time working and more time learning how to bake macarons.
That seems like a lot of extra words just to tell you that I asked my boss for time off to bake cookies.
To avoid weakening your sentences with nouns that should be verbs, try asking these questions:
What are the main verbs in my sentence?
What actions are hidden in the nouns in my sentence?
Could I change those nouns into verbs?
Let’s try those questions with the sentence below:
The manager reached the decision that the creation of email guidelines should be something employees participate in together.
Main verbs: reached, participate
Hidden actions: decide, create
Change nouns to verbs? Yes!
Possible Revision:
The manager decided that employees should create email guidelines together.
If we’re going to have to create email guidelines in real life, we might as well do it in the sentence as well.
Should you ever choose the noun instead of the verb?
If you’ve been reading Hacks for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I’m not a fan of following rules just for the sake of following rules. Instead, I think you should do whatever you think works best for what you are trying to accomplish.
If you want to distance yourself from an action, you may want to hide that action in a noun. For example, if I say “The decision was made to eliminate 22 jobs,” instead of “I decided to eliminate 22 jobs,” I may be able to avoid direct responsibility for that decision. The choice to use the noun might be the right one for me in that scenario—although not my finest hour.
On the other hand, I read a lot of prose in which I suspect the distance is being created (see what I did there?) because the writer wants to sound official or hasn’t really thought about the audience (more on those topics in future Hacks). You probably read a lot of those sentences as well. But that doesn’t mean you should write them. If revealing the action in a sentence makes it a better sentence, then do it!
Is it terrible to say “the participation of the entire team is required” instead of “the entire team must participate”? No. But it’s less direct, and if you don’t have a good reason for choosing the noun, you should choose the verb.
Is it horrible to say “the manager reached the conclusion that the termination of the project was desirable” instead of “the manager concluded the project should be terminated” (or even “the manager terminated the project”)? Yes!
Hack Challenge: This week, look for sentences (in your own writing or in what you’re reading at work) that contain nouns that should be verbs. Please share in the comments if you find any particularly good ones!