Compression

How are you doing? Are you confused? Or are you starting to see what's going on?

Let’s go back through these snippets and highlight the nominal groups and verbal groups so we can see them both clearly.

The natives weren’t communicating very well, and the Europeans took over all their land and placed settlements everywhere.

The native Americans didn’t talk to each other much, so when they found out what the Europeans were doing it was already too late, and the settlers and conquerors were already taking over their land.

Those are the conversational versions.

How do they compare to the original written snippet?

Communications between the tribes of the New World were slow, and news of the Europeans’ barbarities rarely overtook the rapid spread of new conquests and settlements.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee(1970)

Wow.

Do you see how tightly packed the original snippet is compared to the conversational versions?

There’s nothing wrong with the conversational versions, but the written version is very different.

Why? The reason is compression. In the written snippet, Dee Brown is compressing as much information into as little space as possible, and he’s doing it using a specific technique that is used a lot in historical and scientific writing.

Nominalisation in history and social science writing_OLD VERSION