Nominalizations

"The walking of the dog is an activity that Naomi enjoys."

What's wrong with this sentence? Grammatically, nothing. Yet it's still bad writing because it turns an action, walking the dog, into an abstraction represented by a noun. Most of the time, verbs are more interesting as actions than they are in noun forms, known as nominalizations. Here's what you need to know.

 

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Tags: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, NOMINALIZATIONS

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