CBA Record July-August 2023

They increase the passive voice. Using nominalizations tends to increase one’s use of passive voice. I could write a whole column on passive voice, but it is enough to say here that passive voice hides who is doing what. Generally, readers want to know where the action is. In most sentences, avoid the passive voice. l The investigation of how the victim died was conducted. l The police investigated how the victim died. They make your sentences longer – adding to word count. Nominal izations force you to add more prepositions and articles to your sen tences. This can be a problem if you

It’s not an accident, I suspect, that the word ‘noun’ comes from a word that meant just ‘name.’ ‘Verb,’ by contrast, comes from a word that meant... ‘word’ — i.e., the real thing.” Are nominalizations always bad? No. As with most writing style issues, exceptions exist. Nomi nalizations can help us explain abstract ideas like happiness or jurisprudence. Sometimes we need them. However, always be mindful about choosing to use nominalizations. And always see if switching the nominalization back to its core verb makes your sentence stronger and more direct. Avoiding nominalizations helps keep the reader engaged. Your writing will be clear and concise. Punchy verbs will move the reader along. Remember, the legal reader is a busy reader. We need to use every arrow in our quiver to convey our points easily and efficiently. As the late Richard Wydick, champion of clear and concise legal writing, wrote, “The reader’s attention is a pre cious commodity, and you cannot afford to waste it by creat ing your own distractions.” Keep your reader’s attention. Switch those nominalizations back to the real thing – verbs.

have word-count or page limits to meet. Finding and eliminating nominalizations will help make your writing more concise and clearer. l The usage of the property by the defendants was for the print ing of counterfeit bills and storage of illegal weapons. l The defendants printed counterfeit bills and stored illegal weapons on the property. How do we get rid of nominalizations? Change the nominalizations back to the core verbs. Once you have found the nominalizations using the tips above, change them back to active verbs. As you see in the examples above, you may also cut prepositions, articles, and weak helping verbs. Focus on verbs in your writing. In a recent online issue of the New York Times, John McWhorter penned an essay, “Forget nouns. Verbs are where the action is.” McWhorter stressed the importance of verbs over nouns in language. “[M]ost of what we talk about is what happened and what’s happening and that to do so, we need verbs rather than just further iterations of [nouns].

CBA RECORD 45