Nominalizations

When we change an adjective, an adverb, or a verb into a noun, we make a nominalization, as in the following examples:

1) The student succeeded.
2) The student had success.

3) She will jog this afternoon.
4) She will go for a jog this afternoon.

5) The President and Prime Minister met at 15:00 and signed the documents.
6) The President and Prime Minister had a meeting at 15:00 and put their signatures on the documents.

In the first, third, and fifth sentences, "succeeded," "will jog," "met," and "signed" are the verbs.  In the second, fourth, and sixth sentences, "had," "will go," "had," and "put" are the verbs.  The actions "success," "jog," "meeting," and "signatures" become items or things.

While short sentences like the previous examples may not be difficult to understand, sentences with nominalizations often obscure meaning in two ways.  First, they tend to be longer.  You will notice that sentences 1, 3, and 5 are shorter than 2, 4, and 6.  Second, nominalizations move the action one step further away from the agent who acts, as Joseph Williams effectively illustrates by nominalizing a children's story (verbs in italics; actions hiding in nouns underlined):

Once upon a time, as a walk through the woods was taking place on the part of Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf’s jump out from behind a tree occurred, causing fright in Little Red Riding Hood. 

We naturally would tell that story in this manner.

Once upon a time, Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the woods when the Wolf jumped out from behind a tree and frightened her.

The point is that readers usually expect subjects and verbs to be next to each other, the former a flesh and blood character, the later an action; readers can more readily envision an agent acting when his or her action is a specific verb rather than hidden in a noun (i.e. "met" instead of "have (a meeting)," "sign" instead of "put (a signature)," etc.).

Nominalizations are not always bad; however, you need to be aware of which ones are helpful and which ones simply lengthen your sentences.  We have many common nominalizations that readers readily understand:

nominalization	verb
analysis	analyze
abortion	abort
evolution	evolve
decision	decide
question	question
conclusion	conclude
failure	fail

Resources

Helen Sword from the New York Times did a great piece on nominalizations, calling them Zombie Nouns. Lessons 3 and 4 in Joseph Williams' Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace are excellent resources.  Claremont has a handy PDF.