Helen Sword

When you turn a verb into a noun by adding a suffix such as ment or tion (confine → confinement; reflect → reflection), you sap its core energy. Likewise, an abstract noun formed from an adjective (suspicious → suspiciousness) or a concrete noun (globe → globalisation) tends to lack substance and mass, like a marrowless bone. That’s why nouns created from other parts of speech, technically known as ‘nominalisations’, are colloquially called ‘zombie nouns’: they suck the lifeblood from potentially lively prose.16

Examples, analogies and metaphors ground abstract theories in the physical world

3.
Prepositional podge
Key principles in this chapter:

• Avoid using more than three prepositional phrases in a row (e.g. ‘in a letter to the author of a book about birds’) unless you do so to achieve a specific rhetorical effect.

• Vary your prepositions.

• As a general rule, do not allow a noun and its accompanying verb to become separated by more than about twelve words.