Enough with the Noun Pyramids!

What is a noun pyramid?

It is a stack of words – with grammatical guideposts removed – smushed together in an effort to shorten sentences. However, their real impact is to halt a reader’s progress and make them squawk in frustration… that’s what I do, anyway.

The proposed revision to the Yellow Book is full of them. If we aren’t careful, those suckers will turn into something even worse: Acronyms!

The more noun-smushing the writer does, the harder it is on a reader.

Here are a few examples of noun pyramids

I picked up all of these from the 2023 proposed revision of the Yellow Book:

• Quality management risk assessment process
• Identified quality management deficiencies
• Engagement quality review documentation
• Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards
• Engagement quality reviews
• Key audit matters

Notice as they get shorter, they are easier to understand. What would make them the easiest to comprehend is adding back the modifiers telling you which word goes first, which word goes second, and so on…

Please don’t create another acronym

Please, oh, please don’t take the next step with these noun pyramids and turn them into acronyms! Anything but that!

Key audit matters has already crossed over to the dark side as KAM. Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards is the silly acronym GAGAS which always makes me think of Valley girls in the 80s who whined, “Gag me with a spoon!”

As you know, acronyms are very unfriendly to readers and listeners.

One of my hobbies is to ask snooty acronym users, “What does that acronym mean?” Often times, they have no idea and that’s the fun part of my hobby! Maybe they knew at one point, but like everyone else, they are a little ashamed to ask in case they are found out for not being ‘in the know.’ Well, I don’t have a problem admitting not knowing something because saying, “I don’t understand” is a very powerful tool in my ongoing battle against hoity-toity, overly complicated language.

How to break down a noun pyramid

All you have to do to break down a noun pyramid is to add the modifiers back, like ‘that, are, for, of, a, the, on.’

So, Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards becomes standards for auditing government programs that are generally accepted. Hmm… Who generally accepted them, I wonder? 🙂

Or engagement quality review documentation becomes documentation of the review for quality on an engagement.

But a five stories tall noun pyramid is tougher to work with. This newly established pyramid, Quality management risk assessment process becomes the process for conducting a risk assessment over the management of audit quality. Write it that second way, please. Otherwise we will have a QMRAP on our hands which is way too close to the acronym QRAP for my personal taste.

Want to join the fight?

Two things you can do:

1. Write the GAO in response to their 2023 exposure draft and point out the dangerous acronyms that could result if they insist on using noun pyramids that are five stories tall.
2. Join me for our next writing workshop, where I gently remind auditors to speak-a-de English!