MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

We will pick up the handouts from the last post.  I did introduct the technique of using active voice in the "Buffy" handout. We also looked at keeping subjects-verbs together and placing them early one.

Here is a good discussion on these ideas including active voice from Duke's Scientific Communication overview. Read this web exhibit, starting with Principles 2 and 3.  In your reading for your science classes, you may want to look for these techniques.

Principle 1 is new to you.  This focus concerns nominalizations.  Read this New York Times article, which calls nominazations "zombie nouns." Writer Helen Sword says:

Take an adjective (implacable) or a verb (calibrate) or even another noun (crony) and add a suffix like ity, tion or ism. You’ve created a new noun: implacability, calibration, cronyism. Sounds impressive, right? 

Nouns formed from other parts of speech are called nominalizations. Academics love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats and business writers. I call them “zombie nouns” because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings: 

The proliferation of nominalizations in a discursive formation may be an indication of a tendency toward pomposity and abstraction.

H.S.'s "Draft" -- a regular feature -- is a series about the art and craft of writing. 

https://youtu.be/dNlkHtMgcPQ

Now, go back and read the first part of the Duke exhibit.  More zombie-motif ways to learn:  active v. passive

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Another video take, sans voice over.  Which do you prefer?

In the second video, the inventor of this tool is named.  I love that!

And, this.  

Where is my source? What do you think of hypertext as a source?