From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2020 18:55:15 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 01/16] doc: pull: explain what is a fast-forward
Message-ID: <CAMP44s0jERkEoJgCvV3SkehviW0HhLZHCw0jfKUBn1kd=YBtEQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s2JMNML2a8ckdrorgMH6x+NduvWsvRn-p6O=XbYBofNgg@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 8:37 AM Felipe Contreras
<felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:

> Take for example the word "calibration". It is a noun, but you can't
> point to any calibration thing. It comes from the verb calibrating,
> and such conversions are called nominalizations.
>
> I'm currently re-reading The Sense of Style, and it's interesting that
> in Chapter 2 Steven Pinker mentions precisely these nouns, which he
> calls "zombie nouns". They certainly do exist, and people use them,
> but they suck the lifeblood out of prose. Take for example
> "comprehension checks were used as exclusion criteria" (zombie nouns),
> compared to "we excluded people who failed to understand the
> instructions" (live verbs).

Actually I found this video, which is more digestible and enjoyable:

Zombie Nouns and the Passive Voice in Writing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS-Txm3R3v8

-- 
Felipe Contreras