In 2012, the writing scholar Helen Sword published an op-ed in the New York Times warning readers about "zombie nouns"—her term for nominalizations, those abstract nouns derived from verbs:
| Verb | Nominalization |
|---|---|
| investigate | investigation |
| respond | response |
| fail | failure |
She argues that these zombies cannibalize your verbs, draining the lifeblood from your prose and leaving your sentences shuffling forward with no conscious agent directing them.
It's a vivid metaphor. And she's not wrong—most of the time.
But here's the trouble with zombie-hunting: if you kill every nominalization on sight, you'll end up destroying tools you actually need.
Languages are organisms: They evolve, adapt, and become more efficient over time.
And just as a biological organism never keeps an organ that serves no purpose, the English language didn't develop nominalizations by accident. They exist because, sometimes, you need them.
The previous two writing tools told you to put characters in subjects and actions in verbs.
But neat and tidy as such guidelines may be, writing isn't paint by numbers.
Knowing when to turn an action into a noun—and when not to—is where craft begins.
What It Is
A nominalization is a verb or adjective that has been converted into a noun.
| Verb | Nominalization |
|---|---|
| decide | decision |
| investigate | investigation |
| discover | discovery |
You can usually spot nominalizations by their suffixes: -tion, -ment, -ence, -ance, -ity, -ness.
Most of the time, nominalizations make writing feel abstract, indirect, and difficult. They force writers into weak verbs and extra prepositions, and they hide the characters and actions that readers need in order to follow the story.
But there are four situations where nominalizations actually improve clarity.
The skill is learning to tell the difference.
Why It Works
Nominalizations cause problems because they take an action—a dynamic process—and represent it as a thing.
We investigated becomes an investigation was conducted. The action disappears, the character vanishes, and the sentence fills up with grammatical scaffolding that adds length without adding meaning.
But sometimes you want to construe the an action as a thing: You want to refer back to it, point at it, connect it to other ideas.
In those moments, nominalizations serve a real function—one that verbs cannot.
The difference between a good nominalization and a bad one comes down to a simple question: Is this nominalization doing useful work, or is it just hiding an action that would be clearer as a verb?
How to Use It
Four Good Uses of Nominalizations
1. Link back to previous sentences.
When you need to summarize or refer back to ideas from earlier sentences, a nominalization can bundle those ideas into a single noun that carries the reader forward.
Chen proposes that social media accelerates political polarization. Rodriguez suggests that algorithmic curation amplifies extreme viewpoints. Park argues that platform design rewards outrage.
These theories all rest on a single untested assumption.
Theories is a nominalization, but it does essential work: it gathers three separate claims into one word, a summative noun from which the reader can push off into the next idea.
2. Replace awkward phrases.
Nominalizations can replace clunky constructions like the fact that or the idea that.
| Before | The fact that he solved the puzzle surprised me. |
| Better | His solution surprised me. |
| Best | He surprised me when he solved the puzzle. |
3. Turn clauses into concrete objects.
Some verbs need a direct object—something to receive the action. It's no problem when the object is a simple noun phrase. But when the object is an embedded clause, it becomes a little unwieldy.
I approved what he proposed.
We can package that sentence more neatly by converting that noun clause—what he proposed—into a noun phrase, using a nominalization.
I approved his proposal.
Proposal gives the verb approved a concrete object to act on, (rather than a clause).
But a critical caveat: nominalizations work well as objects, not as subjects. Compare:
| ✅ | I approved his proposal. |
| ❌ | His proposal for funding arrived after the cutoff. |
This second one is awkward, because proposals don't arrive; people do. In other words, it's hard to imagine a nominalization performing the action of a verb.
Revised:
| ✅ | He proposed funding after the cutoff. |
4. Use familiar concepts as characters.
Some nominalizations have become so common to your reader that they function like characters in their own right.
The greenhouse effect was a central topic at the conference.
Technically, effect and conference are both nominalizations. But for readers interested in climate science, these words are as familiar as the names of people. They don't need to be unpacked into verbs. They function as characters.
The Diagnostic Test
When you encounter a nominalization in your writing, ask two questions:
- Does this nominalization express an important action that would be clearer as a verb? If yes, revise it.
- Is this concept so familiar to my readers that the nominalization works like a character? If yes, leave it.
Take this sentence:
| ❌ | There is a need for an examination of the marketing strategy. |
Three nominalizations:
needexaminationmarketing
Both need and examination are hiding important actions—convert them to verbs:
| ✅ | We need to examine the marketing strategy. |
But marketing stays as is, because it's a concept so familiar it doesn't need unpacking.
The goal is to free the actions that are trapped while leaving the concepts that are genuinely working as nouns.