Fixing nominalized writing (J. Williams, Style, P. 54, 55)

1. Diagnosis: If you want to predict whether a reader might think your prose is unclear, hard to read, do this:

• Ignoring short introductory phrases, underline the first seven or eight words in each of your sentences.
• Look for three characteristics:
  • Sentences begin not with characters, but with abstract nouns.
  • Sentences take more than six or seven words to get to a verb.
  • Verbs represent actions that are less specific than the abstractions around them.

2. Analysis: If you find such sentence, do this:

• Find or invent a cast of characters.
• Find nominalizations that name the actions those characters perform.

3. Revision: Once you locate the characters and their actions, do this:

• Change the nominalizations into verbs and adjectives.
• Make the characters the subjects of those new verbs.
• Rewrite the sentence with conjunctions like because, if, when, although.