Nominalisation in history and social science writing_OLD VERSION

The change in heart brought about

In the next few pages we’ll experiment with connecting nominalisations with processes (instead of conjunctions).

The change in heart, especially in London, brought about an increase in harsh oceanic activity designed to bring this criminality to an end.

Atlantic(2011)

Here we have two big nominalisations connected by a process.

Try rewriting the snippet using a different process.

The change in heart, especially in London, caused an increase in harsh oceanic activity designed to bring this criminality to an end.

The change in heart, especially in London, must have prevented an increase in harsh oceanic activity designed to bring this criminality to an end.

Write your own variation.

What would that last snippet have looked like if it had used a conjunction instead of a process?

Here’s the snippet again.

The change in heart, especially in London, brought about an increase in harsh oceanic activity designed to bring this criminality to an end.

Atlantic(2011)
Try rewriting the entire snippet using a conjunction like AND, BUT, THEN or BECAUSE.

You can’t just swap the process for a conjunction because if you remove it, then you have no action—and every sentence needs an action.

So to make this change you have to rewrite the nominalisations so they become clauses with their own actions. 

For instance:

The change in heart, especially in London, brought about…

Could become:

People in London had a change of heart which…

Knowing that, see if you can write your own version that has more verbal groups and a conjunction. (You’ll probably find it sounds more like spoken language than written language.)

Previous page