Nominalstil: Turning Verbs into Nouns in Formal German (C1)

Nominalstil (nominal style) is the hallmark of academic, legal and official German. Instead of using full verbs and subordinate clauses, it packs information into noun phrases. Two mechanisms drive it. First, verbs become nouns: durchführen → die Durchführung, prüfen → die Prüfung, teilnehmen → die Teilnahme. The typical suffixes are -ung and -nahme. Second, subordinate clauses collapse into prepositional phrases: als wir das Projekt durchführten → bei der Durchführung des Projekts. The conjunction als ("when") is replaced by the preposition bei + dative (bei dem = beim), and the former object takes the genitive (des Projekts). Other patterns: nachdem wir geprüft hatten → nach Prüfung. The result is dense and impersonal — exactly what reports, contracts and scholarly texts favour. The opposite pole is Verbalstil, which uses verbs and clauses and sounds livelier and more personal. At C1 you should be able to switch between the two: nominalise to sound formal, or "unpack" a noun phrase back into a verbal clause when you want clarity. Watch the case: the nominalised verb governs a genitive object, not an accusative.