What Is Nominalisation?

Nominalisation is the grammatical process of converting a verb or adjective into a noun (or noun phrase). For example, the verb "investigate" becomes the noun "investigation"; the adjective "complex" becomes the noun "complexity." This seemingly simple shift has profound effects on the register, density, and authority of your writing.

Academic and analytical writing relies heavily on nominalisation because it allows writers to package processes and qualities as abstract concepts that can then be discussed, evaluated, and connected to other ideas. At HSC level, effective nominalisation is a hallmark of sophistication.

Before Nominalisation (Informal)

"The poet describes how people destroy the environment, which shows that he is worried about what will happen in the future."

Relies on verbs and clauses; reads as conversational.

After Nominalisation (Academic)

"The poet's depiction of environmental destruction foregrounds an anxiety about futurity."

Verbs become nouns; writing gains density, abstraction, and authority.

How Nominalisation Works

Nominalisation typically involves adding a suffix to a verb or adjective to form a noun. Recognising these patterns will help you both use nominalisation in your own writing and identify it in the texts you analyse.

Verb / Adjective	Suffix	Nominalised Form
explore	-ation	exploration
significant	-ance	significance
develop	-ment	development
fragile	-ity	fragility
refuse	-al	refusal
aware	-ness	awareness

Caution: Over-nominalisation can make writing impenetrable and lifeless. The goal is strategic use — nominalise to achieve precision and density, but maintain enough verbal energy to keep your prose readable and engaging.

Nominalisation as an Analytical Tool

At HSC level, nominalisation is not just a writing technique — it is also an analytical concept. When you encounter nominalisation in a text, you should ask: what is being obscured, abstracted, or depersonalised by this grammatical choice?

Concealing Agency

Nominalisation can remove the human agent from a clause. "The government decided to cut funding" becomes "The decision to cut funding was made." The responsible party disappears, which is a common strategy in political and bureaucratic language.

Creating Abstraction

Nominalisation converts dynamic processes into static things. "People migrated across borders" becomes "migration." This abstraction allows the concept to be discussed in general terms, but it also depersonalises lived experience.

Constructing Authority

Nominalised prose sounds objective and authoritative. Scientific papers, legal documents, and policy reports use heavy nominalisation to construct an impersonal, factual register that resists challenge.

Key Vocabulary

Nominalisation

The grammatical process of converting a verb or adjective into a noun or noun phrase (e.g., "decide" becomes "decision").

Register

The level of formality in language, shaped by context, audience, and purpose. Nominalisation shifts register from informal to academic.

Lexical Density

The proportion of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) in a clause. Nominalisation increases lexical density by packing more meaning into fewer words.

Agency

The attribution of action to a specific agent or actor. Nominalisation can conceal agency by removing the doer from the sentence.

Worked Examples

See how nominalisation transforms writing and how to analyse it in texts.

Example 1: Transforming Your Own Writing

Draft: "The composer shows that the character is isolated because society rejects people who are different."

Nominalised: "The composer foregrounds the protagonist's isolation as a consequence of societal rejection of difference."

Effect: "Isolated" (adjective) becomes "isolation" (noun); "rejects" (verb) becomes "rejection" (noun); "different" (adjective) becomes "difference" (noun). The sentence gains density and conceptual weight. The ideas can now be discussed as abstract phenomena rather than individual actions.

Example 2: Analysing Nominalisation in a Political Speech

Text: "The implementation of the restructuring program will ensure the optimisation of resource allocation."

Analysis: This sentence is heavily nominalised: "implementation" (from "implement"), "restructuring" (from "restructure"), "optimisation" (from "optimise"), "allocation" (from "allocate"). The nominalisation conceals agency — who is implementing, restructuring, and allocating? — and converts dynamic processes into static abstractions, lending the statement an impersonal authority that resists interrogation. This is a deliberate rhetorical strategy to present potentially controversial decisions as inevitable, technocratic processes.

Example 3: Strategic Use in HSC Analysis

Weak: "The author uses imagery to show that the character feels sad and alone, which makes the reader feel sympathetic."

Strong: "The sustained imagery of desolation constructs a representation of psychological alienation, eliciting the responder's sympathetic engagement with the protagonist's interiority."

Effect: Key nominalisations — "desolation," "representation," "alienation," "engagement," "interiority" — compress multiple ideas into a single, dense sentence. The writing now operates at the conceptual level expected of Band 6 analysis, treating emotional states and reader responses as phenomena to be examined rather than simply reported.

Knowledge Check

Test your understanding of nominalisation. Select the correct answer and click "Check Answer".

Question 1

Which of the following is the nominalised form of the verb "to analyse"?

Analysis Analytical Analysing Analytically

Question 2

What is a key effect of nominalisation in formal writing?

It makes writing more casual and accessible It increases lexical density and shifts register toward academic formality It always makes writing clearer It removes all nouns from a sentence

Question 3

"The decision was made to terminate the program." This sentence uses nominalisation to:

Add humour to the sentence Make the sentence more emotional Conceal who made the decision (hide agency) Make the sentence shorter

Question 4

Which sentence demonstrates effective nominalisation for HSC analytical writing?

"The character feels really sad and the reader feels sorry for them." "I think the author makes the reader sad." "Sadness is constructed constructively through construction." "The construction of the protagonist's despair invites the responder's sympathetic engagement."

Question 5

Why should you be cautious about over-nominalisation?

Because excessive nominalisation can make prose dense, lifeless, and difficult to follow Because markers dislike all nominalisation Because nominalisation is only allowed once per paragraph Because nominalisation is grammatically incorrect

Nominalisation in Formal Writing