Trap 3: Creating Noun Clusters

Living languages change constantly. That's how you know they're alive. Certainly the English language, and particularly that version of it spoken in the United States, has changed in many ways just within our lifetimes. For example, people no longer say "I shall" and "you or he will" for future tense. Now, all of us "will," and we leave "shall" to imply obligation. That's cleaner than the old rule, which never made much sense anyway.

Other changes have affected our vocabulary. I recently read an amusing essay by the British novelist and critic David Lodge, "Where It's At: The Poetry of Psychobabble," which was first published in 1981. In it he analyzed and explained a slew of "deviant constructions" that had apparently emerged from California pop culture. Some examples:

"I know where you're coming from," which Lodge translates as "I understand what you mean."
"Heavy" meaning important or serious
"Off the wall" meaning spontaneous or eccentric
"Up front with" meaning honest
"Run [it] by" meaning show or explain, but which we would probably also recognize as having the sense of seeking feedback—another "deviant construction"

The point is that these expressions, which seemed so odd and almost poetic to Lodge, have become part of our ordinary, informal vocabulary.

However, not all language changes are improvements. One of these changes for the worse is the introduction of what I have called "noun clusters" into written and, occasionally, spoken English.

I had to invent the term "noun cluster" because this construction didn't have an official name when I first started complaining about it. Other writers have called them "jammed modifiers" or have referred to these constructions as "noun stacking" or "nominalization." But I called them noun clusters because that's what they are: a cluster of nouns all wadded together, a bolus of incomprehensibility.

To form a noun cluster, you simply string a bunch of nouns together. That's it. There's no special talent required for this activity. In fact, it probably helps to have no talent, or at least no ear, for language.

You see noun clusters frequently in technical proposals and technical documentation. For example, here's a title that appeared on a proposal I received:

FAX TRANSMISSION NETWORK ACCESS COST OPTIMIZATION PROPOSAL

Isn't that a jewel? Or how about these beauties:

Last year, we published the earth resources satellite field station implementation, maintenance, repair manual.
It is a direct drive remote terminal software modification package designed by our internal software applications development management group.
Nova offers specialized technology solutions integration services.
Personnel development in our company is guided by an employee testing training skill development program.

Bear in mind, it has always been legal in English to use one noun to modify another noun. The first noun functions as an adjective in such a construction and is usually called an "attributive noun." Examples are telephone company, cellular phone, bus stop, marriage certificate, book store, and materials laboratory. The problem arises when a whole slew of nouns are crammed together. The poor reader's brain has no way to decode this mess until he or she has already gone through it once. Then the reader has to go back through, figure out which nouns are functioning as nouns, which are adjectives, and what goes with what, and try to make sense out of it.

If you catch yourself writing a noun cluster, what should you do? First, identify the key noun in the sequence. Then put it up front. Look for an opportunity to use a verb, and don't hesitate to link your words with a few prepositions.

Take the first example, the proposal title. As you can see, there's no verb at all in the title. What is the writer trying to say? That we can "optimize" the costs of accessing network service for transmitting faxes. Maybe. But do we want to "optimize" costs? That's ambiguous enough that it might mean costs are going up. After all, optimized costs from the vendor's perspective would be higher, right? Anyway, let's assume the writer is trying to suggest that his or her proposal will enable us to save money when we send faxes over the company's network. Instead of using the buzzword "optimize," let's try some ordinary English:

REDUCING THE COSTS OF NETWORK ACCESS FOR TRANSMITTING FAXES

Or maybe something even simpler:

REDUCING THE COST OF SENDING FAXES: A PROPOSAL TO ENHANCE YOUR NETWORK SERVICE

Take a look at the second example. How can we straighten out that pretzel? In this sentence, the key noun appears to be "manual." So let's move that up front and then ask ourselves, what kind of manual is it?

Last year, we published the manual for implementing, maintaining, and repairing the field station for the earth resources satellite.

Voila! English!

In the third example, the key idea is probably the fact that our group designed the software. So let's put that up front.

Our development group has designed ...

Now try to rearrange the remaining nouns in short phrases, using prepositions to show linkage and converting some of the nouns to participles:

Our development group has designed a modification package for software used on direct terminals in remote locations.

That's a little better, I think, a little easier to understand the first time through. The final phrase, "on direct terminals in remote locations," still sounds awkward, but the whole sentence begins to resemble plain English rather than some weird technospeak.

Avoid noun clusters in your proposals. They're difficult to understand, they slow down the reading process, and they sound awful.