Bad diction: the uninhabited clause (12)

Overuse of the uninhabited clause is a form of bad diction. I use the phrase “uninhabited clause” to describe a clause with a subject that is a physical thing or a concept as opposed to a person or group of persons.*

Last Thursday, in another context, I quoted the president and the marketing vice president of Embotics, a Canadian software company. The same quotations are also excellent examples of uninhabited clauses.

The president said:

“Virtualization came in fast and grew quickly, without going through the normal impact assessments that most technologies have to weather before deployment. One of the outcomes of this is that the impact of virtualization as a new data centre architecture has only surfaced during the growth phase, leading to problems and eventually applying the brakes to the whole initiative – virtual stall.” (61 words)

The president has used two sentences, containing four clauses, containing four subjects. All four subjects are non-human:

virtualization came in and grew
technologies have to weather
one (outcome) is
impact has surfaced

When someone uses mostly (or only) non-human subjects, his writing sounds hollow. He conveys to the reader a sense that “nobody’s doing anything.”

The marketing vice president said:

“Virtualization is a new architecture in data centers, and one that crosses most of the traditional silos. It entered the data center in a different way than most technologies; driven by the potential economic savings associated with consolidation and the value of the flexibility it brings to IT organizations. It was introduced as a top-down initiative aimed at decreasing the ongoing footprint of the data center and preparing for an internal cloud architecture. It came in fast, grew fast, but hadn’t gone through the normal impact assessments that most external data center technologies do before deployment.

“Its impact surfaces during the growth phase, leading to problems and eventually applies the brakes to the whole initiative – also known as virtual stall.” (120 words)

In this longer passage you can clearly hear the hollowness. The marketing vice president has used four sentences, containing eight clauses, containing eight subjects. All eight subjects are non-human:

virtualization is
that (virtualization) crosses
it (virtualization) entered
it (virtualization) brings
it (virtualization) was introduced
it (virtualization) came in but grew and hadn’t gone through
technologies do (go through)
impact surfaces and applies

The Takeaway: Whenever you feel that your prose may sound hollow, conduct this test: Select a paragraph or two. Take out a pen and circle every non-human subject of every main clause. Then read aloud all those non-human subjects and their verbs, as in the list above. If it really sounds hollow, put in some people. It will make your prose feel more substantial to the reader.

See disclaimer.

*In previous posts on this topic, I have defined “uninhabited clause” narrowly as a main clause with a subject that is a physical thing or a concept as opposed to a person or group of persons. To improve readability, I am broadening the definition to include dependent clauses. The definition is now: “An uninhabited clause is a clause with a subject that is a physical thing or a concept as opposed to a person or group of persons.”