Nominal vs. Verbal Style
Nominal vs. Verbal Style
Dutch style guides wage a permanent campaign against the nominal style: overgaan tot de aanschaf van instead of simply aanschaffen. Recognizing the pattern lets you both decode official prose and write more clearly than it.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
The nominal style buries the verb in a noun
overgaan tot de aanschaf van → aanschaffen; in het bezit zijn van → hebben
to proceed to the purchase of → to buy; to be in possession of → to have
Administrative Dutch converts the meaningful verb into a noun and props it up with a colourless one — overgaan tot, plaatsvinden, uitvoering geven aan. The result is longer, vaguer and harder to read. English bureaucratic prose does exactly the same thing, so the fix transfers too: find the noun that contains the action and turn it back into the main verb.
Typical props: plaatsvinden, doen, geven, komen tot
Er vindt een evaluatie plaats. → Wij evalueren.
An evaluation takes place. → We evaluate.
The give-away verbs are plaatsvinden ('take place'), uitvoeren, verrichten, doen and komen tot. When you see one of them beside an -ing or -atie noun, the sentence can almost always be shortened. Note that rewriting also restores the agent — Er vindt een evaluatie plaats hides who is evaluating, while Wij evalueren names them.
Some nominal constructions are worth keeping
de invoering van de wet, het verschijnen van het rapport
the introduction of the law, the publication of the report
Nominalization is not always a fault. It is the right choice when the event itself is the topic of the sentence, when you need to compress a summary, or when the agent genuinely does not matter. The rule of thumb is that one nominalization per sentence is informative and three make it opaque.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- the purchase
- English
- to proceed to
- English
- to take place
- English
- to carry out
- English
- to implement
- English
- to be in possession of
- English
- the evaluation
- English
- the introduction
- English
- concise
- English
- long-winded
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