Verbs hidden in nouns
nominalizationon by default (info)Japanese / English
Verbs hidden in nouns ("make a decision", "conduct an analysis"), used too often
Example
The rule measures the whole document, so this example was tried with an ordinary passage (about 200 words) after it that gives chaff nothing to report.
How to fix
Use the verb: "made a decision" becomes "decided", "conduct an analysis" becomes "analyze".
Why it matters
"Make a decision" says in three words what "decide" says in one. A verb turned into a noun and carried by another verb makes the sentence longer and the action harder to see. The Federal Plain Language Guidelines call these hidden verbs, and GOV.UK asks for the verb; the Japanese guideline for plain Japanese rewrites 調査を実施した as 調査した. One or two are ordinary, so chaff speaks only when they are dense for the document's length.
What it does not flag
Phrases not on chaff's list, and a document where they are few for its length, are not reported. Very short documents are not measured.
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L3
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- info
- Languages
- Japanese and English
- Suited to
- business, technical, blog, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech
- Reads from the document
- pos
Levels
Set a level for this rule under rules in chaff.yaml. With nothing set, it runs at the level its genre gives it (see By genre below).
| strict | up to 1 nominalized verbs ("make a decision") per 1000 words |
|---|---|
| normal | up to 2 nominalized verbs ("make a decision") per 1000 words |
| relaxed | up to 4 nominalized verbs ("make a decision") per 1000 words |
By genre
- Runs by default in
- technical/spec, technical/readme, blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper, speech/address, speech/transcript
- Turned off by the genre in
- legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play
Message
"{matched}" can be "{preferred}" ({density} hidden verbs per 1000 words, limit {limit})
Rewrite depth (chaff fix-plan --depth): light — words and sentences; the structure and the voice stay
Sources
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/nominalization.yaml