What to do about noun clusters
A personal frustration of mine is when I see a cluster of nouns sitting together in a sentence. I usually see these in highly technical emails, but not exclusively.
Here is a particularly bad example I received this morning:
The Web Product Provider search print Individual Provider Map does not print the listing originally found [...]
What are some good strategies for breaking up these nouns while still keeping the language specific and concise?
Edit: I should add a little context here as well. This statement isn't supposed to cover a complex topic. It's nothing more complicated than the following:
- User enters a search term
- User clicks map button on the list of results
- User prints the list of results
The issue I am trying to tackle is that the user who experienced this problem needs to report enough specifics to be complete, but at the same time, do so in a manner that is easily parsed. There is a trend of using clusters of nouns instead of simple English.
(P.S. I'm asking this so that I can become a better writer, not as ammunition — just in case you were thinking it.)
Edit #2: I thought of a few more examples that might paint a better picture of the problem.
The operations review evaluation task force is responsible for this task.
He doesn't know how to read the aperture adjustment calibration manual.
She started the 12-week half-marathon training regimen for beginners.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1330. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Howzabout:
The Web Product Provider's search result, "Individual Provider Map," does not...
If I in fact understood that chunk of jargon correctly.
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To me, it seems that your examples don't include a sequence of nouns, but nouns that are more than one word.
Here are your examples, with added quotes to delimit the nouns:
The "Web Product Provider" search "print Individual Provider Map" does not print the listing originally found
The "operations review evaluation task force" is responsible for this task.
He doesn't know how to read the "aperture adjustment calibration manual".
She started the "12-week half-marathon training regimen for beginners".
Perhaps I'm missing something (perhaps I'm part of the problem!) but multi-word nouns are nothing new to the English language:
- time series
- curriculum vitae
- remote control
- Cameron's room
- toenail clippers
I'm not arguing that your original example is well written - since it didn't communicate clearly, it wasn't.
Assuming that my parsing of the phrase is correct, I'd rewite it this way:
The product provider search on the website does not print the listing originally found when I search for "print Individual Provider Map"
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/1395. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I think part of the difficulty with the sentence can be corrected by emphasizing the problem being reported:
Using the print functionality after doing a search in the Web Product Provider (specifically, attempting to print the Individual Provider Map) results in the wrong listing being printed.
Parenthetical statements are not considered ideal; when they can reduce clutter in the core of the sentence, I find them useful.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/1341. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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