Final Practicum: Noun Style vs. Verb Style

Final Practicum: Noun Style vs. Verb Style

Karen Du

Linguistic Analysis

Critical Discussion

• New York Times is a public newspaper
• Verb-style prose is generally shorter and simpler overall: someone or something must act.
• Sentences are clearer when actions are described in verbs, rather than nouns.
• Allows for patterns, parallel phrases, appealing to eye and ear

Verb style: The horror arrived in episodic bursts of chilling disbelief, signified first by trembling floors, sharp eruptions, cracked windows.

Noun style: The arrival of the horror in episodic bursts of chilling disbelief came by the signification of trembling foors, sharp eruptions, cracked windows.

Verb style: Dense plumes of smoke raced through the downtown avenues, coursing between the buildings, shaped like tornadoes on their sides.

Noun style: The racing through the downtown avenues and coursing between the buildings of dense plumes of smoke had the shape of tornadoes on their sides.

• Verb Style: subject-verb opening, based on strong verbs that emphasize and direct action. Deliberate rhythm and pattern.
• vs. Noun Style: Noun + 'is' + prepositional phrase. Based on nouns with weak verbs
• Simple and direct instead of complex and abstract

1. It kept getting worse.

2. The horror arrived in episodic bursts of chilling disbelief, signified first by trembling

3. floors, sharp eruptions, cracked windows. There was the actual unfathomable realization 4. of a gaping, flaming hole in first one of the tall towers, and then the same thing all over

5. again in its twin. There was the merciless sight of bodies helplessly tumbling out, some of 6. them in flames.

7. Finally, the mighty towers themselves were reduced to nothing. Dense plumes of smoke 8. raced through the downtown avenues, coursing between the buildings, shaped like

9. tornadoes on their sides.

10. Every sound was cause for alarm. A plane appeared overhead. Was another one

11. coming? No, it was a fighter jet. But was it friend or enemy? People scrambled for their 12. lives, but they didn't know where to go. Should they go north, south, east, west? Stay

13. outside, go indoors? People hid beneath cars and each other. Some contemplated

14. jumping into the river. (jumping is used as a noun)

15. For those trying to flee the very epicenter of the collapsing World Trade Center towers, 16. the most horrid thought of all finally dawned on them: nowhere was safe.

17. For several panic-stricken hours yesterday morning, people in Lower Manhattan

18. witnessed the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the unthinkable. "I don't know what 19. the gates of hell look like, but it's got to be like this," said John Maloney, a security

20. director for an Internet firm in the trade center. "I'm a combat veteran, Vietnam, and I 21. never saw anything like this."

22. The first warnings were small ones. Blocks away, Jim Farmer, a film composer, was

23. having breakfast at a small restaurant on West Broadway. He heard the sound of a jet.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/9-11imagemap.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/12/nyregion/12SCEN.html?pagewanted=all

Summarize: http://incompetentwriter.com/2011/06/08/writing-better-sentences-part-2noun-style-verb-style/

http://ctl.byu.edu/sites/default/files/critical_reading_mini-lessons/07-Analyzing_Prose_Noun_and_Verb_Styles.pdf

Close reading: http://sarab-closereadingnyc.blogspot.com/2009/08/noun-style-vs-verb-style.html