Scary nouns or zombies pose a threat to healthy prose. A zombie, defined by Reader’s Digest Universal Dictionary, is a snake god of voodoo cults in west Africa Haiti and the southern United States. It is a super natural power which, according to voodoo belief, can enter a corpse and reanimate it. As far as the English language goes, a zombie is a noun that sucks the blood of a verb and gulps down an adjective. And it turns a sentence into a corpse.
The words, like implementation, assessment, requirement, authorisation, development, participation, realisation, punishment and production, are awful nouns. There is a huge tribe of such words in the English language. So, good writers give a wide berth to such ugly nouns.
A national daily in India once wrote: “For development, prosperity and for the construction of a nation, implementation of government’s welfare schemes, and people’s participation in them is a necessity.”
The sentence is not grammatically incorrect, but it has six zombies, the children of four verbs and two adjectives.
They have sucked the lifeblood from the verbs: develop, construct, implement and participate and the adjectives like prosperous and necessary.
Adjectives, too, fall prey to zombies. The words, like applicability, reliability, happiness, ugliness, gratefulness and forgetfulness, may frighten any newspaper editor.
All these words are derived from adjectives like applicable, reliable, happy, ugly, grateful and forgetful.
Yet, we cannot elbow out all zombies, since some combinations of nouns and adjectives help us put our thoughts together.
Nevertheless, that does not explain the reasons for using unavoidable zombies.
The expressions, like “rain activities,” “sports activities” and “political activities,” are avoidable.
For example, they like recreational activity. Since “recreational activity” may signify anything like games or theatres. The writers must be specific about whether they mean theatres or games. Similarly, “rain activities” signifies nothing, since only “rain” is enough.
There are two scary nouns – like facilities and amenities – that regularly creep into our sentences. Many journalists write about shopping facilities/amenities, but only “shops” can help. Similarly, they often write about parking facilities/amenities, but the word “carparks” can do wonders.
We daily see the words like “Issue” and “problem,” but they only steal space and ruin living images.
There was a sentence in a national daily: The troublesome issue of midday meal came up in the assembly for discussion. However correct the sentence may be, the phrases, “troublesome issue” and “came up in the assembly,” are frightening. The assembly or the House discussed “troublesome school midday meal” would have been enough. The adjectives can often be called to duty. The verbs, too, can ace out the barbarians.
The words, like “purposes” “aims” “objectives,” should be disposed of. For example, the government acquired 400 acres of land for building purposes.
The sentence should have been: the government got 400 acres to build houses. Similarly, “the government’s aim of acquiring 600 hectares of land is to build houses for the poor.”
The copy editor should have put to route the invaders like “of land” “aim” “acquiring.”
When a newspaper editor tries to cross off a zombie called “situation,” he fights for breath, because he has many, like unemployment situation, supply situation, financial situation, chaotic situation, abnormal situation, tense situation, and the law-and-order situation. It goes on.
