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Word order schmoder, break the chains

I have three links to share with you on the topic of word order of adjectives before nouns. As I came across each of these postings, I thought they were very helpful. But, as usual, the brain keeps working on the concept and now I have a different opinion: they are useful to those dedicated to verbosity. Do you love noun strings, then remember the rules for their use. These posts are certainly worth reading:

1. From the excellent Triangle Grammar Guide, Rules for word order: OPSHACOM for opinion, shape, age, color, origin and material.

2. Pam Nelson, of the blog above, refers us to Professor Grammar. He gives a lesson online at http://www.professorgrammar.com/opshacom2.shtml
There is also an entertaining video.

3. Then the very nice Ray Ward at the (new) legal writer shares some links and offers this line chart:
opinion :: size :: age :: shape :: color :: origin :: material :: purpose

Here is what the University of Victoria's Writer's Guide says about noun strings:

...But the ability of English to link nouns in this way can lead to ambiguous and turgid writing. For example, a headline that reads "Woman Killer At Large" could refer to either a killer of women or a woman who kills.

English even allows a whole group of nouns to be strung together, but the longer the string, the longer it takes a reader unfamiliar with the term to figure it out. Noun strings are often found in newspaper headlines where space is at a premium ("Car Insurance Firm Secret Sale Shock Probe") and technical manuals ("put the wing sprocket flange grommet over the side frame angle bracket lever").

Noun strings or noun chains are a major component of jargon: "computer systems analyst," "human resource development project newsletter deadline," "health information science" (until you know what it is about, it is unclear whether it deals with "the health of information-science" or "the science of health-information"). The simple way to avoid noun strings is to separate the nouns by appropriate prepositions.

And here is some standard advice from SFU Style Exercises

1. Break up noun strings with prepositional phrases.

2. If possible, turn some nouns into verbs.

3. Use hyphens to indicate closely related words.

4. Use acronyms when feasible.

5. Eliminate words that are not needed in the noun string.

6. Three nouns in a string is hard to understand; four or more nouns in a string is excessive.

And Ray Ward tackles the subject from this perspective here.

From the perspective of a writer committed to plain language, the rules are:

Avoid noun strings.
Simplify.
Get to the point.

Full post as published by Building Rapport on August 24, 2008 (boomark / email).