Nominalisation
One feature of academic style is the use of nominalisation. Nominalisation means you take a verb and change it into a noun in order to make your writing sound more academic. Just as when using the passive voice, nominalisation changes the focus of the sentence from the actor to the action. At times this is certainly appropriate even though the trend is to avoid it.
Here are some examples of how you can change a verb into a noun.
| Verb | Noun |
|---|---|
| act | action |
| produce | production |
| advance | advancement |
| meet | meeting |
| clever | cleverness |
| aware | awareness |
Often the word-endings -ion, -ment, -ness are clues that nominalisation has occurred.
A text with a lot of nominalisation might sound like this:
The taking of evasive measures resulting in the avoidance of predatory actions by the offending party was a result of the meeting of the previously mentioned little pigs and their awareness of the premeditation of the wolf in terms of harmful deceptions and his cleverness in the execution of his criminal intentions.
I am sure in your studies you have come across similar texts. They are not easy to read, even though they do sound academic. So, let’s take all of the nominalisations out.
The following two texts are much easier to read:
Examples:
The little pigs evaded the attempt of the sneaky wolf to kill them because they had met before and knew that he planned to deceive and to kill them.
Again, the golden rule is that you can and sometimes should use nominalisation, but do not overuse it.