Nominalisation Overload: When Formal English Becomes Heavy

Nominalisation turns verbs or adjectives into nouns: decide → decision, implement → implementation, fail → failure. It is a legitimate feature of academic and professional English, but excessive nominalisation can make a sentence abstract, slow and difficult to assign responsibility.

Useful nominalisation

Nouns are helpful when a process itself becomes the topic: The implementation of the policy took six months. Here, implementation is a genuine concept that the text may discuss repeatedly.

When the sentence becomes unnecessarily heavy

Compare: The team conducted an evaluation of the proposal with The team evaluated the proposal. The verb version is shorter and makes the action clearer.

Hidden actors

A decision was made regarding the closure avoids saying who decided. Sometimes that is intentional; often it weakens accountability. A clearer version is The board decided to close the office.

Noun stacks

Professional writing can accumulate several nouns: customer service quality improvement programme review process. Even if grammatically possible, such stacks force the reader to decode relationships. Use prepositions or clauses: the process for reviewing the programme designed to improve customer-service quality.

Do not eliminate every nominalisation

A simplistic “verbs are always better” rule is wrong. Technical disciplines need abstract nouns such as variation, correlation, compliance, acquisition. The goal is to choose the form that makes relationships easiest to understand.

Editing method

Circle nouns ending in -tion, -ment, -ance, -ity. Ask: (1) Is this noun the real topic? (2) Is there a hidden verb? (3) Has the actor disappeared? (4) Would a finite verb shorten the sentence without losing precision?

Before and after

Heavy: The implementation of a reduction in response times was achieved through the introduction of automated routing.

Clearer: We reduced response times by introducing automated routing.

The second version is not less intelligent. It is more accountable and easier to process.