MANY of us are familiar with this conventional grammar wisdom: turning verbs into nouns — or what is termed 'nominalization' in linguistics — is bad for the health of our prose. The evidence that this is true is, of course, painfully clear. Take this particularly turgid example of bureaucratic writing: 'The conclusion of this interim faculty performance evaluation committee is that there has been an inadequate information dissemination effort with respect to the new instruction performance standards as mandated and enforced by the Department of Education effective January 1, 2004.'

The sentence above is obviously not only difficult to comprehend but also sounds vacuously authoritative. Yet not a few academics and bureaucrats think they are doing a great job by making such convoluted sentences. They don't realize that for every verb they assiduously convert to a noun-form, they erect just one more tough barrier to effective communication.