Nominalization: Turning Verbs and Adjectives into Nouns

In speech, we usually describe events with verbs and qualities with adjectives: The population grew quickly. The results were reliable. In formal and academic writing, the same ideas often appear as nouns: the rapid growth of the population, the reliability of the results. This process is called nominalization (British spelling: nominalisation).

The difference is not just style. When an action becomes a noun, it becomes a thing that you can describe, count, compare, and use as the subject of a new sentence. That is why textbooks, reports, news articles and essays are full of words like development, reduction, analysis and importance.

You already know many nominalizations. The skill at C1 is using them actively and accurately, with the right prepositions and the right connecting verbs.

Follow these steps. First, find the main verb or adjective and change it into a noun: decide becomes decision, fail becomes failure, important becomes importance. Second, change any adverb into an adjective: increased dramatically becomes a dramatic increase. Third, move the doer into a possessive or an of-phrase: the government decided becomes the government's decision or the decision of the government. Fourth, add a suitable verb to link the new noun to the rest of the sentence.

For example: Unemployment fell rapidly because the economy recovered. The verbs fell and recovered become nouns, the adverb becomes an adjective, and because becomes a cause verb: The rapid fall in unemployment was caused by the recovery of the economy, or more simply, Economic recovery led to a rapid fall in unemployment.

Notice that nominalization often removes the person who did the action. This can make writing sound objective, similar to the impersonal passive.

It packs information. A noun phrase can hold a lot of detail in a small space: the government's controversial decision to raise taxes on fuel. One noun phrase can replace a whole clause.

It connects sentences. Nominalization lets you sum up the previous sentence and continue from it: Prices rose by 20 percent. This rise was the largest in a decade. This technique, often called a summary noun, makes paragraphs flow. Common summary nouns include this increase, this trend, this problem, this approach and this decision.

It sounds objective. Without a person as the subject, the focus moves to processes and ideas, which suits reports and research. For more on formal writing, see how to improve your English writing.

In both everyday and formal English, a common kind of nominalization uses a light verb + noun instead of a single verb: decide becomes make a decision, discuss becomes have a discussion, investigate becomes carry out an investigation, consider becomes take into consideration.

These phrases are useful because the noun can take adjectives: make a difficult decision, have a long discussion. Learn which light verb goes with which noun, because they are fixed collocations: make a decision (not do), give a presentation, conduct a survey, reach an agreement, pay attention.

Do not overuse them, though. In plain writing, a single verb is often clearer: we decided is better than we made a decision when you have nothing to add.

Nominalization is a tool, not a goal. Too many abstract nouns in one sentence make writing heavy and vague: The implementation of the optimization of the evaluation process necessitated the reconsideration of resource allocation. A reader has to work hard to find who did what.

Use verbs when the action and the person matter, and in conversation, instructions and most emails. Use nominalization when you need to summarize, connect ideas, compare processes or sound objective. A good test: if you cannot say who did the action and why it matters, go back to a verb.

Watch out for spelling: British English uses -ise or -ize and -yse (analyse, nominalisation), while American English uses -ize and -yze (analyze, nominalization). Both are correct; just be consistent. See English spelling rules.

You will see nominalization every day in news headlines (Rise in Rents Hits Students), company emails (Following our discussion, ...), and university reading lists. In IELTS and Cambridge writing tasks, describing a graph almost always uses it: There was a steady decline in sales between 2015 and 2020.

To practise, take a few sentences from a spoken explanation and rewrite them as formal written sentences, then compare them with the original. Pay special attention to prepositions: an increase in, an effect on, a demand for. For other ways to restructure sentences, see cleft sentences and participle clauses.