Day 288: Revise long noun strings serving as subjects.

Long noun strings can confuse the reader, and they certainly prevent active, engaging sentences. Consider this sentence.

“The early casualty response coordination team arrived at the scene.”

The noun string here is “casualty response coordination team.” What we don’t know is whether “early” is a part of the name for the team (i.e., the team that deals with early casualties) or whether we’re writing about the team that arrived early. Also, as a subject, this noun string is ungainly and confusing. The reader may be left wondering “What kind of team?” and then have to study it to understand. Even so, the reader still might not understand.

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The problem is that the subject has 4 nouns in a row. We can revise it using verbs and prepositional phrases. For example, the nominalization “coordination” can be reverted to the verb “coordinate,” and the noun “casualty” can be rewritten as the prepositional phrase “to casualties.”

Here’s one possible revision.

“The team coordinating the response to early casualties arrived at the scene.”

Now the confusion is gone, and the simple subject is easier to identify: “team.”