When do you know you’re relying too much on abstract nouns?  Check your sentences.  Do you use “analysis” as the subject when you could have used “analyze” as the verb, instead?  Do you use “expectation” as a subject when using “expect” as a verb is possible?  Run through your sentences and look for these instances – changing them around will make your writing considerably better.

When To Use Abstract Nouns

Of course, there will be instances where it makes more sense to use the abstract noun.   Other than these cases, though, we recommend you leave them out of your writing:

1. When the noun makes a reference to a previous sentence.
2. When they allow you to be more concise.
3. When the abstract noun is a concept you want to discuss.

Why Do Away With Abstract Nouns

1. They often require prepositions.  Having a lot of prepositional phrases within a paragraph can make the main thoughts difficult to follow.
2. They invite a passive construction.   That is, they’re less direct and less clear.
3. Abstract ideas are less interesting than concrete, detailed topics.  Concrete nouns are just easier to understand, compared to abstract ones.
4. They make your reasoning confusing.  When you use too many abstract nouns, the reader often has to work doubly hard just to understand your flow of thought.

Some writing checkers can be set to check for abstract nouns.  If the one you’re using has this feature, make sure to take advantage of it.

If the above details problems that you need a grammar software to help you through, then you need to learn about count and non-count nouns.  Basically, this property of nouns refer to whether they can be counted or not.

Definition Time

Count nouns are things that can be divided into smaller distinct units.  Non-count nouns, on the other hand, refer to things that are regarded as a whole and cannot be broken up in parts.

A table, for instance, is a count noun (you can saw it off).  Furniture (which refers to a collective whole), on the other hand, is a non-count noun.  A book is a count noun; knowledge is a non-count noun.  And so on.

Applications

Count nouns are words that can be pluralized by adding “s” at the end.  Non-count, on the other hand, cannot have a plural form.  Do note that some words in the English language are both count and non-count, depending on use, and can be pluralized with an “s”.  Examples of these two-timing words include “light,” “sound,” and “problem.”

As for articles, non-count nouns can only be combined with the articles “the,” “this,” and “that.”  Singular count nouns, on the other hand, can be used with “a,” “an,” “the,” “this” and “that,” while plural non-count can only be employed with “the,” “these” and “those.”

Adjectives

Many novice writers try to prop up their sentences with the use of adjectives, thinking these modifiers can bring color to otherwise drab prose.  While that may be correct to some extent, it’s more important to fashion interesting nouns (and verbs) to achieve the improvements they are looking for.  In fact, excessive attempts at imputing characteristics to nouns can backfire, leading to messy writing.

Finding Interesting Nouns

The next time you feel the need to add two or more adjectives to modify a noun, it is usually best to take a step back and see if you can alter the text in another manner.  What exactly are you trying to describe with the combination of the adjective and the noun?

For instance, saying “the loud, hairy dog” can easily be substituted with “the German Shepherd,” which is more descriptive and can conjure a more complete image in the reader’s mind.  See, while the “loud and hairy” adjectives can aid in the picture, it is hardly complete and exact.  Announcing it as a German Shepherd, on the other hand, solidifies that idea, bringing along with it the readers’ innate feelings and thoughts about the particular animal.

If you’re at a loss when trying to replace your adjectives with stronger nouns, try to make use of the integrated thesaurus and word tools in your grammar software.  A little digging and some thought should turn up a more useful word for you to squeeze in there.