The Gallery of Errors · Specimen 905

The Grant Proposal

A Municipal Subcommittee · Application for the Advancement of Facilitation (a composed specimen) · Executive summary

hover a marked phrase · click to pin · chips toggle layers

It has been determined that the implementation of the utilization of

community-based resources is a critical priority going forward.

The facilitation of the optimization of stakeholder engagement outcomes

will be operationalized in a timely manner by means of the leveraging of

synergies.

Thesis of failureAgentless passives, nominalization stacked on nominalization, and periphrasis as policy. Every verb that could carry responsibility has been converted into a noun and buried; what remains is syntax with no one inside it.

OccasionPublic money must be requested without anyone becoming responsible for anything. The grammar has been arranged accordingly.

PersonaThe institutional passive: a voice from nowhere, promising processes.

Device index

Hover a card to trace its span in the passage; click to pin its dossier card.

Tropes

Periphrasisas policy

The roundabout phrase where a direct one exists.

Schemes

Passive Voiceagentless

The actor removed from the action.

Pleonasmthe redundant future

Words surplus to the sense.

Syntax

Nominalization Cascade

Verbs converted to abstract nouns, then chained with "of."

Empty Modification

Modifier stacks in which no word narrows any other.

Full dossier

1The Autopsy

Diagram one sentence and the scheme shows itself. Subject: "the facilitation." Verb: "will be operationalized." A nothing will be done to an abstraction. Prose can survive the occasional passive and the occasional nominalization — English needs both. What it cannot survive is their systematic use as architecture, because this architecture has a purpose: a sentence with no agent can contain no failure, and a document written entirely in such sentences is not a proposal; it is advance cover.

2The Repair

Reinstate the actors and their verbs. "The library will run the programme, using the town's existing meeting rooms. We will start in March and report attendance in June." Every verb has an owner; every promise has a date. This plan can now fail — which is exactly what makes it possible to trust.