Nominalisation in Formal Writing

• Nominalisation means turning verbs and adjectives into nouns. This makes your writing sound more objective, formal, and professional, which is essential when you lodge a formal complaint.
• Verb / Adjective
• Noun Form
• Formal Example
• decide
• the decision
• We made the decision to cancel.
• available
• availability
• Please check room availability.
• fail
• failure
• We regret their failure to deliver.
• refuse
• refusal
• He noted their refusal to cooperate.
• Remember
• Use nominalisation to remove personal pronouns like 'I' or 'we' and focus on the action or state.
• Often follow the new noun with prepositions like 'to', 'of', or 'for'.
• Pair the noun with strong formal verbs such as 'make', 'reach', or 'experience'.
• Examples
• They announced their decision to close the Seattle branch.
• Due to the unavailability of the manager, we left a message.
• The company's failure to respond caused great dissatisfaction.
• Common mistakes
• We decided to cancel because of they refused.
• We decided to cancel because of their refusal.

Complete the sentences

• We regret the (delay) ____ in shipping your order to Boston.
• Please confirm your (available) ____ for a meeting in New York.
• Their constant (refuse) ____ to help led to this dispute.
• We noted the (fail) ____ to provide correct instructions.
• Management made the (decide) ____ to offer a refund.
• Customers expressed deep (dissatisfied) ____ with the service in Chicago.

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