The facilitation of interpretive accessibility through the optimization of sentence-level communicative practices remains a significant challenge within contemporary academic discourse.

Or, to put it another way: Academic writing is often hard to read.

You might have noticed that the first option feels less like reading and more like someone slowly tightening a ratchet strap around your torso.

That is because nearly every important word in it is a noun:

• facilitation
• accessibility
• optimization
• practices
• challenge
• discourse

The main action in that first sentence is “remains.” Besides remaining, the only thing the reader really experiences is things.

The sentence does not move forward so much as accumulate mass. Nothing happens, nothing moves, and no person acts upon anything. The prose just keeps unloading additional conceptual objects into the reader’s arms until they topple over. 

Be honest… Did you actually try to parse that opening sentence before moving on? I wouldn’t. I’d be on the hunt for context clues immediately.

Consider this sentence:

“The analysis of gender representation in film contributed to the development of a broader understanding of cinematic characterization.”

Nothing about the sentence is technically incorrect, but consider how difficult it is to picture what actually happened. Somewhere inside this sentence, buried six feet under analyses, representations, films, developments, understandings, and characterizations, a person watched a movie.

Perhaps we might have gathered that had they written:

“By analyzing gender representation in film, researchers developed new interpretations of characterization.”

Or maybe even:

“Researchers analyzed how films portray gender.”

Notice how those sentences contain a character. This is rare in academic writing, which is often written by ghosts.

I suppose somewhere along the line, students became convinced that verbs were informal. This probably happened around the time we outlawed the first-person pronoun, and everything stopped being used and started undergoing utilization. 

This tendency toward abstraction has many forms, but one of the worst offenders is nominalization: turning verbs into nouns.

• “We decided” becomes “the decision-making process.”
• “We compared the results” becomes “a comparison of the results was conducted.”
• “We investigated the problem” becomes “an investigative inquiry into the problematic circumstance was conducted.”

(If you think that last one is exaggerated, spend a few hours reading student papers.)

Verbs generate momentum because they move. One thing acts upon another, and the reader experiences thought unfolding through sequence, causality, and change. Nominalization interrupts that movement by freezing actions into objects.

Verbs move. Nouns sit there. 

Once the verb disappears, the sentence starts compensating for the loss. So more words enter the sentence, but less arrives in the reader’s mind.

This is why overly nominalized prose feels slow even when the individual words are familiar. The reader must continuously translate concepts back into actions before meaning fully forms. 

“The dog chased the ball” produces an immediate mental image.

“The chase of the ball by the dog” does not.

Many students learn early that clarity sounds less academic than complexity, even when the complex sentence communicates less. In some academic environments, accessibility or enjoyability is treated almost like a loss of prestige.

I understand the temptation because I fell for it myself. During my early years of college, many of the academic readings I encountered took significant effort to dissect, so I concluded that difficulty was simply a feature of serious writing. If the experts wrote this way, surely I was supposed to as well.

What I didn’t realize was that not every academic is equally interested in being read. A brilliant researcher can still write a miserable sentence.

But imitation only explains part of it.

For me, the deeper issue was insecurity. I quickly learned that sounding intelligent is often safer than being understood immediately. A clear sentence exposes you.

“Researchers analyzed how films portray gender.”

There it is. A reader can instantly decide whether the idea is persuasive, obvious, shallow, interesting, incomplete, or wrong.

Then compare that to:

“The analysis of gender representation in film contributed to the development of a broader understanding of cinematic characterization.”

Now the claim exists behind several layers of nominal fog. The sentence sounds formal before it becomes intelligible. Sometimes that is the point.

Unfortunately, this strategy often undermines the very thing academic writing is supposed to accomplish: communicating ideas.

Good prose does not simplify thought. It clarifies it. In fact, clarity becomes more important as ideas become more complex. The harder the concept, the less additional friction the sentence can afford. 

When writers allow people to perform actions, readers gain something to follow. The subject provides continuity. As a paragraph unfolds, the reader only has to keep asking a simple question: What is this person, group, or thing doing now?

That question is surprisingly powerful because it gives the paragraph a center of gravity. Each sentence feels connected to the last, not because the ideas are merely related, but because the reader can track a consistent subject through them. When the reader can easily identify who is doing what, they are free to focus on the more interesting question: Why does it matter?

So how do you de-nominalize a sentence?

Start by locating the corpse of the verb. Somewhere inside “evaluation” is “evaluate.” Inside “analysis” is “analyze.” Inside “discussion” is “discuss.”

Then let somebody perform it. Sentences usually become clearer once somebody is allowed to do something. So when “a discussion of the results was conducted,” ask yourself who is actually discussing the results. Perhaps a group. The group discussed the results.

Okay, reader, I get it. You’re probably fully capable of deciphering these nominalized sentences.

But let me ask you something: Do you actually want to? Or would you rather your writing sound alive? Because liveliness is not exclusive to creative writing. When prose sounds alive, ideas become easier to follow.

Complex concepts already ask a lot of the reader.

Your prose should help carry the weight, not add to it.