From a magazine I just proofread:
"The archaeologist made a thorough documentation of the ruins and artifacts."
This sentence is grammatically correct but not well written. I object to the phrase "made a thorough documentation of." Why not just say "thoroughly documented"? That saves three words and is much more to the point. "Documentation" is a nominalization, which I rail against in my book and in one of my WD columns.
Please learn what nominalizations are and then please try to avoid them!
Wow. Did you ever stop to consider that nominalization, as a linguistic process, has a purpose?
ReplyDeleteIt is disappointing to find such a successful individual making so many assertions without basing them in any kind of informed (applied) linguistic approach.
I'd suggest looking into nominalization as it is addressed in various linguistic theories - my preferred one is system functional linguistics ... if that doesn't suite you, maybe try corpus linguistics.
Practice is only part of what makes a professional a success and worth listening to ... (OMG - look there, I ended a sentence with a preposition!)
A concerned and veteran technical writer, professor, corporate trainer, second/foreign language teacher ... not mention multilingual glocal (yes glocal) citizen