中式英语之鉴VII. The Noun Plague

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This chapter explains why using too many nouns, especially abstract ones, makes English writing unclear and hard to read. The author calls this problem the "Noun Plague" and compares good English (which uses strong verbs) with "Chinglish" (which relies too much on nouns).  
First, the chapter lists different types of unnecessary nouns:  
1. Redundant nouns – Words that repeat meaning, like "accelerate the pace of reform" (just say "accelerate reform").  
2. Empty nouns – Words like "realization" or "practice" that add no real meaning (e.g., "following the realization of mechanization" → "after mechanizing").  
3. Category nouns– General words like "objective" or "aspect" that aren’t needed (e.g., "achieve the objective of clarity" → "be clear").  
  The biggest issue is abstract nouns (e.g., "prolongation," "implementation"), which make sentences longer and harder to understand. Instead, the author suggests:  
- Replacing nouns with verbs– "Make an improvement" → "improve."  
- Using gerunds (-ing words)– "Economic revitalization" → "Revitalizing the economy."  
- Adding prepositions or hyphens – "Research project design" → "design of the research project."  
  Sometimes, noun-heavy phrases are so confusing that the best fix is to rewrite the whole sentence in plain English.  
  The chapter also warns against long chains of nouns (e.g., "State key protection relic sites"), which are common in translations from Chinese but don’t work well in English. Breaking them up with verbs or small connecting words makes them clearer.  Good writing is simple and direct. Cutting unnecessary nouns and using more verbs makes sentences clearer and more natural.