Noun groups / phrases
Nouns with pre-modifiers and post-modifiers make a noun chunk or phrase. When you have a few of these in one sentence, things get complicated to read.
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Nouns with pre-modifiers and post-modifiers make a noun chunk or phrase. When you have a few of these in one sentence, things get complicated to read.
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Be aware of how pre and post words (modifiers) build up noun groups / phrases. Sometimes the build up of modifiers makes the sentence harder to read. You can chop out words you don't need to simplify your sentences.
Often a noun phrase is just a noun or a pronoun:
People like to have money. I am tired.
But noun phrases can also include:
determiners: Those houses are very expensive.
quantifiers: I've lived in a lot of houses.
numbers: My brother owns two houses.
adjectives: I love old houses.
These parts of the noun phrase are called premodifiers because they go before the noun.
We use premodifiers in this order:
For example:
Other parts of a noun phrase go after the noun. These are called post-modifiers.
Post-modifiers can be:
prepositional phrases:
a man with a gun the boy in the blue shirt the house on the corner
the man standing over there the boy talking to Angela
the man we met yesterday the house that Jack built the woman who discovered radium an eight-year-old boy who attempted to rob a sweet shop
that clauses. These are very common after nouns like idea, fact, belief, suggestion:
He's still very fit, in spite of the fact that he's over eighty. She got the idea that people didn't like her. There was a suggestion that the children should be sent home.
I've got no decent shoes to wear.
These are very common after indefinite pronouns and adverbs:
You should take something to read. I need somewhere to sleep.
There may be more than one post-modifier:
an eight-year old boy with a gun who tried to rob a sweet shop that girl over there in a green dress drinking a Coke
Readability suffers when three words that are ordinarily separate nouns follow in succession. Once you get past three, the string becomes unbearable.
Technically, clustering nouns turns all but the last noun into adjectives. However, many users will think they’ve found the noun when they’re still reading adjectives, and will become confused.
Bring these constructions under control by eliminating descriptive words that aren’t essential. If you can’t do that, open up the construction by using more prepositions and articles to clarify the relationships among the words.
Determiners and quantifiers
Numbers
Adjectives
NOUNS
The
six
children
Our
young
children
Six
young
children
These
six
young
children
Some
young
children
All those
six
young
children
Their many
young
children