Nominalisation: Turning Verbs into Nouns

How implement becomes implementation — the engine of academic English style.

Explanation

Nominalisation is the process of transforming a verb or adjective into a noun so that an action or quality can be talked about as a thing. The verb implement, for example, becomes the noun implementation; decide becomes decision; grow becomes growth.

Most English nominalisations are built with suffixes. The four most productive are -tion / -sion (implement → implementation, decide → decision), -ment (develop → development, achieve → achievement), -ance / -ence (perform → performance, occur → occurrence) and -ity (able → ability, complex → complexity).

In academic and professional writing, nominalisation lets you pack a great deal of meaning into a single noun phrase. Compare: Researchers analysed the data and concluded that the method was effective. — with the nominalised version: The analysis and conclusion demonstrated the effectiveness of the method. The second version sounds more formal because the actions are presented as established objects of study rather than as events happening in time.

Examples

Read the pairs below. In each case, the verb on the left has been turned into a nominalisation on the right.

• The team refused to compromise. → The team's refusal to compromise surprised everyone.
• Governments regulate the industry. → Regulation of the industry is essential.
• She responded calmly. → Her response was calm and measured.
• They argued that the policy had failed. → Their argument that the policy had failed was convincing.
• The children grew quickly. → Growth was rapid.

Notice how the nominalised sentence often removes the agent (who did the action) or pushes it into a possessive or prepositional phrase. This creates a more detached, objective tone — one of the hallmarks of academic register.

Common mistakes

1. Over-nominalising. Every noun you create adds an extra word. Stack too many together and the prose becomes heavy and unreadable: The implementation of the regulation of the assessment of the performance of employees… Keep a balance between nominal and verbal style.

2. Wrong verb patterns. Some verbs take prepositions that their nominalisations do not. You discuss something (no preposition), but you have a discussion about something. You depend on something, but you have a dependence on something. Learners often say *discuss about by analogy with discussion about — this is incorrect.

3. Article errors. Many nominalisations are uncountable when used in a general sense: Education is important. Not *The education is important. Use a / an for a specific instance: She received an education in France.

4. Mixing registers. Slipping from a noun phrase back into a verb mid-sentence sounds clumsy: *The implementation of the policy was not followed by an evaluation that the team developed… Decide on one style and keep it consistent throughout the clause.

In real life

Two colleagues, Anna and Ben, are reviewing a draft of a research article before submission.

Anna: Your introduction is clear, but it reads a little informally. Have you thought about using more nominalisations?

Ben: You mean like turning "the researchers found" into "the findings"?

Anna: Exactly. Or "the team analysed the data" could become "the analysis of the data".

Ben: Right, but I don't want to overdo it. My supervisor once said a sentence like "the implementation of the regulation of the assessment of the performance of…" was unreadable.

Anna: Good point. Use nominalisations where they add information density, but keep at least one strong verb per sentence to drive the argument forward.