Nominalisation in Formal Writing

• In professional and formal technical writing, we often convert verbs and adjectives into nouns. This process, called nominalisation, helps us focus on actions and states objectively. It shifts the emphasis from the people performing the action to the action itself.
• Base Form
• Nominalised Form
• Example Sentence
• decide (v)
• the decision to / of
• The decision to migrate to the cloud was approved.
• available (adj)
• the availability of
• We need to ensure the continuous availability of the service.
• implement (v)
• the implementation of
• The implementation of the database took two weeks.
• secure (adj)
• the security of
• They raised questions about the security of the API.
• Remember
• Use nominalisation to make your technical and design documents sound more objective, detached, and authoritative.
• Convert verbs into noun phrases (e.g., 'we analyzed' becomes 'the analysis of') to describe processes as established facts.
• Convert adjectives into noun phrases (e.g., 'the system is stable' becomes 'the stability of the system') to highlight attributes.
• Do not over-nominalise, as too many heavy nouns in a single sentence can make your writing dry and difficult to read.
• Examples
• Instead of 'We decided to use AWS,' write: 'The decision to use AWS was based on cost.'
• Instead of 'The system is highly reliable,' write: 'The high reliability of the system is key.'
• Instead of 'We need to define how we will scale,' write: 'The definition of our scaling strategy is complete.'
• Common mistakes
• The project's success depends on the available of the API.
• The project's success depends on the availability of the API.
• We are waiting for the choose of the database.
• We are waiting for the choice of the database.

Complete the sentences

• Our engineering team in Chicago needs to improve the (reliable) ____ of our main payment gateway.
• The (implement) ____ of the new microservice in London will begin next Monday.
• They discussed the (prepare) ____ of the design doc before scheduling the review.
• We are currently testing the (stable) ____ of the database server in New York.
• The senior architect praised the (simple) ____ of the proposed notification engine.
• The team made the (decide) ____ to deprecate the old authentication service.

Sources: photo by Tirachard Kumtanom on Pexels