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Writing an RFC That Gets Approved: nominalization and formal register in an RFC

Nominalization and formal register are the grammar of this C1 English for IT lesson plan on writing an RFC.

Grammar
Nouns from verbs and adjectives (decide → decision), the preposition each noun takes (a reduction in, reliance on), There will be + noun, and when nouns hide who acts.
Topic
Writing an RFC at a fictional payments startup and getting it approved, with words such as get buy-in, sign off on and prior art.
Activities
An RFC to read, an AI-voiced edit of the first draft, self-checking drills, a Slack review chat and a wheel of pitches; for homework, students write two sections of their own RFC and record a pitch.

What's inside

  1. Chapter 1Warm-up: proposals that went nowhere

    • PictureUnlock
    • Open a box and answerOpen the boxUnlock
    • Study the vocabulary of RFCs and reviewsVocabularyTry it
    • Match each situation to the right termMatchUnlock

  2. Chapter 2Reading: RFC-017, payout retries

    • Before you read: match the RFC sections to their purposeMatchUnlock
    • Read the RFC: automatic retries for failed payoutsArticleUnlock
    • True or false? Check the facts in the RFCTrue or falseUnlock
    • Choose the correct answer about the RFCQuizUnlock

  3. Chapter 3Listening: from chatty to concise

    • Listen to Maya and Rui editing the first draftListeningTry it
    • Transcript, for the teacherUnlock
    • Choose the correct answer about the editQuizUnlock

  4. Chapter 4Grammar: nouns without the zombies

    • Study the scheme: nominalization and formal registerGrammar schemeTry it
    • Fill in the table: nouns and their prepositionsFill in the tableTry it
    • Choose the correct option for the RFCChoose the optionUnlock
    • Fill in the gaps: make the chatty sentences formalFill in the gapsUnlock
    • Choose the correct answer: formal, plain or zombie?QuizUnlock

  5. Chapter 5Speaking: pitch it, defend it

    • Choose the right replies to PriyaChatTry it
    • Spin the wheel and answerSpin the wheelUnlock

  6. Chapter 6Homework: your own RFC

    • Fill in the gaps: bring the verbs backFill in the gapsUnlock
    • Find the matching pairs: RFC terms and their meaningsMemory gameUnlock
    • Write the Motivation and Proposal sections of your own RFCWriting, checked by the teacherUnlock
    • Record your RFC pitchSpeaking, checked by the teacherUnlock

22 exercises in 6 chapters. Start a 7-day free trial to open all of them, copy any part into your own lessons, and teach the lesson live.

Vocabulary

10 words and phrases from the lesson, each with a picture and audio in edio.

+7 more with pictures and audio in the lessonMore words

  • open question
  • prior art
  • strawman
  • hand-wavy
  • exponential backoff
  • idempotency key
  • dead-letter queue

Grammar: nominalization and formal register

Nominalization turns a verb or an adjective into a noun: decide becomes decision, available becomes availability. In an RFC, nouns keep the headings and the Summary concise, while verbs keep the steps clear about who does what. Learners use each style where it does its job, attach the right preposition to every noun and keep their words plain.

Nominalization: formal, not fancy

Nouns make headings and summaries concise. Verbs show who does what. A good RFC uses both.

From verb or adjective to noun

The nouns take endings such as -ion, -ure, -ance, -al and -ity: decision, failure, reliance, approval, reliability. Increase keeps its form. The verb's object follows the noun with of: the implementation of the scheduler.

Verb / adjectiveNounIn an RFC
decidedecisiona decision on the retry limit
implementimplementationthe implementation of the scheduler
migratemigrationthe migration of old payouts to Ledger v2
failfailurepayout failures; the failure of a bank's API
rely onrelianceour reliance on one bank partner
reducereductiona reduction in support tickets
increaseincrease (same form)an increase in retry traffic
approveapprovalapproval of (or for) the rollout plan
analyzeanalysisan analysis of last quarter's failures
availableavailabilitythe availability of the bank's API
complexcomplexitythe complexity of the retry logic
reliablereliabilitythe reliability of payouts

Which preposition comes after the noun?

Nouns of change take in for what changes and of for the amount: a decrease in latency, but a drop of 40 ms. Impact and reliance take on, need and demand take for, and risk takes of: a risk of duplicate payouts.

After the nounNounsExample
inan increase, a reduction, a decrease, a dropa decrease in latency (but of + the amount: a drop of 40 ms)
onthe impact, reliance, a decision (also about)the impact on merchants; the impact of retries on the bank's API
forthe need, a demandthe need for manual review; a demand for faster payouts
ofa risk; most other nouns from verbs and adjectives (implementation, migration, availability…)a risk of duplicate payouts; the availability of the API

There will be + noun

A formal claim about a change can open with There will be, then the noun and its preposition: There will be a reduction in support tickets. There introduces the change, so avoid It will be a reduction in…

There will bea / an + nounpreposition + what changes

There will be a reduction in support tickets.

There will be an increase in retry traffic during outages.

Verb style or noun style?

Each style has its place. Slack, speech and steps want verbs: Latency will go down. Headings, summaries and formal claims want nouns: Automatic retries for failed payouts. A good RFC uses both styles, often in one section.

Verbs: Slack, speech, steps

  • Latency will go down.
  • We'll retry failed payouts automatically.
  • We rely too much on one bank.

Nouns: headings, summaries, formal claims

  • There will be a reduction in latency.
  • Automatic retries for failed payouts
  • Our reliance on one bank is a risk.

When nouns hurt: zombie nouns

A noun can hide the person who acts. A decision was made to pause the rollout never says who decided; Maya decided to pause the rollout does. Wherever readers need the doer, bring the verb back: Tom will implement the fix.

  • A decision was made to pause the rollout.Who decided? Better: Maya **decided** to pause the rollout.
  • The implementation of the fix will be done by Tom.Better: Tom **will implement** the fix.
  • An analysis of the logs was carried out.Who did it? Better: Lena **analyzed** the logs.

Formal is not fancy

Formality comes from structure, such as headings, nouns and there will be, and not from rare words. Write use, not utilize; start, not commence; help, not facilitate; need, not necessitate.

Formal is not fancy

Formality comes from structure: headings, nouns, there will be. It does not come from rare words. Write use, not utilize; start, not commence; help, not facilitate; need, not necessitate.

Typical mistakes

  • a decrease of latency

    a decrease in latency

    in + what changes; of + the amount (a decrease of 40 ms).

  • the implementation the cache

    the implementation of the cache

    The verb's object needs of.

  • the payout retry failure email template

    the email template for failed payout retries

    Break long noun stacks with for, of or a verb.

  • We will utilize backoff to facilitate failure remediation.

    We will use backoff to recover from temporary failures.

    Plain words. Formal is not fancy.

Try the nominalization exercises

Try them yourself: these are the same exercises your students do in edio.

More exercises

What's in the lesson

  • 11 auto-checked exercises
  • 3 games
  • 2 teacher-checked tasks
  • 1 article
  • 1 grammar scheme
  • 1 set of word cards
  • 1 audio clip
  • 1 picture
  • 1 transcript

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

  • turn verbs and adjectives into nouns for headings and summaries: reduce → a reduction in support tickets, complex → the complexity of the retry logic
  • put the right preposition after each noun: an increase in retry traffic, the impact on merchants, the need for manual review, a risk of duplicate payouts
  • spot a noun that hides the doer and bring the verb back: A decision was made to pause the rollout → Maya decided to pause the rollout
  • write the Motivation and Proposal sections of an RFC and pitch it to leadership: This RFC proposes…

Lesson 9 of English for IT C1 · Across the Company closes the unit Security and design, whose writing covers advisories, trade-offs and RFCs. Lesson 5 turned phrasal verbs into nouns such as a rollout and a sign-off; this lesson does the same with verbs and adjectives, and lesson 10 opens the next unit with participle clauses. An RFC is a natural home for nouns, since leadership often reads no further than its Summary.

Students open boxes of questions about proposals and reviews, learn ten terms with pictures and audio, from get buy-in and strawman to idempotency key, and match them to situations. After matching RFC sections to their purpose, they read RFC-017 on payout retries and check it with true-or-false and multiple-choice questions. In an AI-voiced dialogue, Maya helps Rui cut the chatty sentences from his first draft. Four self-checking exercises follow the scheme, from a table of nouns with their prepositions to a quiz on formal, plain and zombie sentences. To speak, students answer Priya's review in a Slack chat, then spin a wheel to pitch a change or say a sentence formally.

Homework begins with two self-checking exercises: gaps that bring the verbs back and a memory match of RFC terms. Students then write the Motivation and Proposal sections of an RFC for a change they want at work and record a pitch for engineering leadership, both for the teacher to review.

Grammar:
nominalization · formal register · nouns with prepositions
Topic:
RFCs · technical writing · payments

Teaching tips

  • Ask in-company groups to bring a real design doc: learners highlight every noun of change, check its preposition against the scheme and turn one zombie sentence back into a verb.
  • Before the reading, hide the RFC's headings: pairs guess what Summary, Motivation, Risks and Rollout plan should each contain, then check with the matching exercise.
  • Run a register relay: one team reads out a chatty Slack line, the other turns it into a Summary sentence with There will be or a noun and its preposition, then they swap.
  • With one-to-one clients, draft a Summary for their own project: two sentences only, starting with This RFC proposes… and The main benefit is…, then compare it with their first version.

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The whole course: English for IT C1 · Across the Company

15 lessons at C1 for people who build software, in American English, with definitions instead of translations. The people of Kestrel Cloud, a fictional payments startup, write updates, reviews, RFCs and postmortems, explain tech to non-tech colleagues and negotiate scope. Real cases include the CrowdStrike outage and the xz backdoor.See the course

  1. Unit 1 Talking to the team

    async updates, code review and plain explanations: the future perfect, hedging, cleft sentences

    1. Lesson 1Async Stand-ups: Status Updates People Can Act OnFuture forms for status updates
    2. Lesson 2Code Review Without the DramaHedging in code review
    3. Lesson 3Explaining Tech to Non-Tech PeopleIt-clefts and wh-clefts

  2. Unit 2 Shipping and incidents

    estimates, releases and outages: conditionals without if, phrasal verbs, modal perfects

    1. Lesson 4Estimates, Deadlines and Saying No (Politely)Conditionals without if and mixed conditionals
    2. Lesson 5Release Day: Rolling Out and Rolling BackPhrasal verbs and their noun forms
    3. Lesson 6Incident! Learning from the CrowdStrike OutageModal perfects and narrative tenses

  3. Unit 3 Security and design

    advisories, trade-offs and RFCs: passive reporting structures, concession and contrast, nominalization

    1. Lesson 7Security Advisory: The xz BackdoorPassive reporting structures
    2. Lesson 8System Design: Every Choice Has a CostConcession, contrast and modified comparatives
    3. Lesson 9 · you're hereWriting an RFC That Gets ApprovedNominalization and formal register

  4. Unit 4 Docs, metrics and meetings

    READMEs, dashboards and follow-ups: participle clauses, describing trends, reporting verbs

    1. Lesson 10Docs People Actually ReadReduced relative clauses and participle clauses
    2. Lesson 11Metrics, Dashboards and SLOsPrepositions with numbers, trends and approximation
    3. Lesson 12Meeting Notes and Follow-upsReporting verbs and their patterns

  5. Unit 5 Retros, interviews and AI

    looking back and ahead: wish and would rather, inversion, formal obligation and permission

    1. Lesson 13The Retro: What Went Wrong This QuarterWish, would rather and it's high time
    2. Lesson 14The Interview: Selling Your AchievementsInversion for emphasis
    3. Lesson 15AI at Work: Writing the Team's RulesObligation and permission in formal rules

Questions about this lesson

What is nominalization?
Nominalization is making a noun out of a verb or an adjective: decide gives decision, reduce gives reduction and complex gives complexity. The noun names a process or a result as a thing, which suits headings and summaries: There will be a reduction in support tickets. British English spells the term nominalisation; the grammar is the same.
What is formal register?
Formal register is the careful, impersonal style of official and professional writing: precise words, full sentences and no slang. In technical documents, it comes mostly from structure, such as headings, nouns of change and frames like There will be…, not from rare words. So write use, not utilize, and help, not facilitate. The C1 lesson Writing an RFC That Gets Approved on edio.ai sums this up as formal, not fancy.
What are some examples of nominalization?
Typical examples pair a verb with its noun: implement → implementation, fail → failure, rely on → reliance on, analyze → analysis, approve → approval. Adjectives give nouns too: available → availability, reliable → reliability. Compare We rely too much on one bank with Our reliance on one bank is a risk: the same fact, in a more formal frame.
Which prepositions go with nouns like increase, impact and need?
Each of these nouns has its own preposition: an increase in, a reduction in, the impact on, reliance on, the need for, a demand for, a risk of. Most other nouns made from verbs take of before their object: the implementation of the cache. Learn each noun with its preposition, as one chunk. A fill-in table in Writing an RFC That Gets Approved, a C1 lesson on edio.ai, drills nine such nouns.
Is it "a decrease in" or "a decrease of"?
Both are correct, with different jobs: in + what changes, of + the amount. So it's a decrease in latency and an increase in retry traffic, but a drop of 40 ms and an increase of 20%. A decrease of failures is wrong, because failures are what changes, not the size of the change. One phrase can hold both: a decrease of 40 ms in latency.
What are zombie nouns?
Zombie nouns are nouns that hide who does what: An analysis of the logs was carried out never says who looked at the logs. Bring the verb back and name the person: Lena analyzed the logs. The same fix turns The implementation of the fix will be done by Tom into Tom will implement the fix. Keep nouns for headings and summaries, where they name a result.
What should an RFC template include?
A practical RFC template has a short header and six sections. The header names the author, reviewers, approvers and status (In review). Then come the Summary (the change and its main benefit), Motivation (the problem today and who feels it), Proposal (exactly what will change), Alternatives considered, Risks and Rollout plan. RFC-017 in the C1 lesson Writing an RFC That Gets Approved on edio.ai uses this outline.
How do you write an RFC?
Open with the decision you need from your readers, in one line: This RFC proposes automatic retries for failed payouts. Add the main benefit (The main benefit is a reduction in support tickets.), give the Motivation a number and make the Proposal say who does what. Share a rough strawman early, get a reviewer's buy-in before leadership reads it, and ask the approvers to sign off on it by a date.
What is a strawman proposal?
A strawman is a rough first proposal, made to be criticized: you share it early so colleagues can pull it apart before anyone polishes it. Two review terms often travel with it: prior art, meaning existing solutions to the same problem, and hand-wavy, meaning vague about the details that matter, as in The dead-letter queue part is a bit hand-wavy.
How do I teach nominalization to C1 learners?
Start from two sentences that say the same thing: Latency will go down and There will be a reduction in latency. Ask where each belongs, Slack or an RFC Summary, before any rule. Then build a table of verbs, nouns and prepositions, and end with the limit: one zombie sentence rewritten so the doer comes back. Writing an RFC That Gets Approved on edio.ai follows the same order.
What's good homework for practicing nominalization?
Good homework is a proposal from the learner's own work: the Motivation and Proposal sections of an RFC, with at least four nouns and their prepositions (a reduction in, the need for, a risk of) and plain verbs where readers need the doer. A recorded pitch adds speaking. On edio.ai, Writing an RFC That Gets Approved sets both for the teacher, after gaps and a memory match that check themselves.
Are there interactive exercises for nominalization?
Yes: self-checking tables and chats show at once whether a noun and its preposition fit. Without an account, this page plays three parts of Writing an RFC That Gets Approved, a C1 lesson on edio.ai: Maya and Rui's edit of a chatty first draft, a table of nouns and their prepositions to fill in, and a Slack chat in which students answer Priya's review. The other exercises are locked.
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