Writing That Works
Avoiding ‘Zombie Nouns’ (Nominalizations): One Way to Bring ‘Blah’ Legal Writing to Life
Recently, a friend asked me to look at a document she was preparing to submit to a court. She thought the document was substantively strong and well-organized, but she felt it was “blah,” and she wasn’t sure why. As I skimmed through the document, I spotted the culprit: a recurring grammatical construction called a nominalization. When I pointed out several instances of the construction to her, my friend easily recognized her tendency to use nominalizations, though she had never heard that term before. So I thought the readers of this column might also benefit from a short lesson on nominalizations.
A nominalization occurs when a writer turns a perfectly good verb, adjective, or adverb into a noun. Each of the following sentences contains a verb, adjective, or adverb that has been “nouned.”
The defendant made the decision not to testify.
We can make the argument that the complaint fails to state a claim.
Can you provide a response to the judge’s inquiry?
The witness demonstrated greater agitation as the cross-examination proceeded.
The prosecutor delivered her closing argument with passion.
In a popular YouTube video on the subject, Helen Swords calls nominalizations “zombie nouns” because they “consume the living. They cannibalize active verbs, they suck the life blood out of adjectives, and they substitute abstract entities for human beings.”[i] And as Sword’s video recognizes, lawyers are among the most prolific nominalizers (along with academics, bureaucrats, and business writers).
One reason nominalizations are common in lawyers’ writing may be that they are common in judicial opinions. As a colleague has explained it, “Legal writers tend to mimic the language and structure of writing in judicial opinions, and judicial opinions tend to contain lots of nominalizations. Law professors aren’t off the hook, either; academic articles are filled with them. Based on the examples of legal writing from which new legal writers learn to write, they mistakenly come to believe nominalizations sound official and lawyerly. And so a new generation of nominalizers is born.”[ii]
Nominalizations make our writing less powerful by diluting the strength of the verbs, adjectives, and adverbs they replace. As one grammar site explains, “Nominalized sentences may be grammatically and factually correct, but vague. Most humans learn best when they can form specific, vivid mental images — and verbs [and adjectives and adverbs] are more vivid than nouns.”[iii] Thus, one way legal writers can make their writing more accessible to readers (less “blah”) is to eliminate nominalizations.
In each of the example sentences above, the writer can easily replace each “zombie noun” phrase with a stronger verb, adding power to the sentence or question.
The defendant decided not to testify.
We can argue that the complaint fails to state a claim.
Can you respond to the judge’s inquiry?
The witness became more agitated as the cross-examination proceeded.
The prosecutor delivered her closing argument passionately.
To contextualize the benefits of replacing “zombie nouns” with their more powerful counterparts, I’ve reprinted below two passages, both adapted from a memo assignment my students wrote last fall. The first passage has six nominalizations (italicized), most of which the writer lifted directly from the opinion that provided the governing rule about covenants not to compete.
I have reached the conclusion that Dr. Franklin’s covenant not to compete is likely unenforceable because it is in violation of public policy. Covenants not to compete are in restraint of trade and are therefore subject to strict scrutiny. To be enforceable, such covenants must be in writing and duly signed, based upon valuable consideration, reasonably necessary for the protection of legitimate business interests, reasonable as to time and territory, and not otherwise in violation of public policy.
The second passage is identical to the first in its content, but the six nominalizations have been replaced with their verb or adjective counterparts (italicized).
I have concluded that Dr. Franklin’s covenant is likely unenforceable because it violates public policy. Covenants not to compete restrain trade and are therefore strictly scrutinized. To be enforceable, such covenants must be in writing and duly signed, based upon valuable consideration, reasonably necessary to protect legitimate business interests, reasonable as to time and territory, and not otherwise against public policy.
The second passage is not only more powerful (or “punchier,” as legal writing expert Ross Guberman is fond of saying); it is also shorter by seventeen words. Removing nominalizations almost always has the welcome side effect of making our writing more concise.
To help you recognize and eliminate nominalizations in your own writing, I offer this list of some of the most common nominalizations and their more powerful verb counterparts.
made the decision > decided
made the argument > argued
made the observation > observed
made clear > clarified
made a motion > moved
made the statement > stated
made mention of > mentioned
made the request > requested
made a ruling > ruled
made an effort > tried
made a promise > promised
gave consideration to > considered
gave assistance > assisted
gave an explanation > explained
gave an answer > answered
gave an apology > apologized
conducted an analysis > analyzed
As this list suggests, one quick way to catch nominalizations during your editing process is to add the words made and make and the words gave and give to your “hit list” of terms to search for using the “Find” feature.[iv] Of course, not all nominalizations begin with these words, but many do. You might also add the suffixes -ion and –ment, which appear in several common nominalizations. When you focus on finding and removing the “zombie nouns” in your writing, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to bring “blah” writing to life!
Laura Graham serves as Professor of Legal Writing and Director of Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research at Wake Forest University School of Law. She is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Wake Forest University School of Law, where she received the 1994 Outstanding Woman Law Graduate Award. She was also the first recipient of the Graham Award for Excellence in Teaching Legal Research and Writing, which is named in her honor. She welcomes emails from readers at [email protected].
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ENDNOTES
[i] Helen Sword, Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns), YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNlkHtMgcPQ.
[ii] Elizabeth Ruiz Frost, Nominalizations: How to Ruin Perfectly Good Verbs and Adjectives, Ore. State B. Bull.: The Legal Writer 13 (Apr. 2017), available at https://www.osbar.org/bulletin/issues/2017/2017April/html5/index.html?page=13.
[iii] Nominalization: Don’t Overuse Abstract Nouns (Prefer Vivid Verbs Instead), Jerz’s Literacy Weblog, https://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/grammar-and-syntax/nominalization/.
[iv] If you aren’t familiar with the concept of the editing “hit list,” I invite you to read my column on this subject in the November 2020 issue of North Carolina Lawyer. https://www.ncbar.org/nc-lawyer/2020-11/writing-that-works/