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!
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Wow. Did you ever stop to consider that nominalization, as a linguistic process, has a purpose?
It 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
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