5 advanced exercises — use nominal clauses confidently in postmortems, design documents, RFCs, and standups. Covers that-clauses, wh-clauses, and the mandative subjunctive.
Nominal clause starters — quick reference
that — reports known content: "The logs confirmed that the timeout occurred at 14:32."
what — "the thing that": "What the traces show is a cascading failure."
whether — open binary question: "Whether to use REST or gRPC is still undecided."
how — manner/method: "The doc explains how the token refresh works."
why — reason as clause: "Why the service degraded is explained in section 4."
Verbs that take that-clauses: conclude, confirm, note, find, determine, suggest, recommend, require, propose, indicate, state, report
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
A postmortem report contains this sentence: "The incident review board _____ the monitoring alert threshold had been set too high, which delayed detection by 12 minutes." Which verb correctly introduces a nominal that-clause in a formal report?
Concluded that is correct. Verbs that can introduce a nominal that-clause fall into specific semantic groups: reporting/thinking verbs: conclude, find, determine, establish, note, observe, confirm; communication verbs: state, report, indicate, suggest, recommend, propose; cognitive verbs: believe, assume, consider, expect. The incorrect options fail because: told requires a personal object ("told the team that…"); spoke and discussed do not take a that-clause as a direct object in standard usage ("discussed that…" is non-standard — use "discussed the fact that" or simply rephrase). In technical reports, prefer formal verbs: "The analysis confirmed that… / The logs indicated that… / The review established that…"
2 / 5
A design doc opens with: "_____ the current monolith cannot handle more than 500 concurrent connections is evident from the load test results attached in Appendix A." Which option correctly uses a nominal clause as the subject of the sentence?
A nominal that-clause as subject is a clause starting with that which functions as the grammatical subject of the main verb. Structure: That + [clause] + is/was/has been + [adjective/noun phrase]. Examples in technical writing: "That the API response time exceeds 2 seconds is unacceptable for production." / "That this approach reduces latency by 40% is demonstrated in Figure 3." The other options introduce adverbial clauses (cause, contrast, time) — they modify the main clause but cannot stand as the subject. Note: in formal writing, the that-clause subject is preferred over the informal "It is evident that…" extraposition, though extraposition ("It is evident that the monolith cannot…") is also grammatically correct and very common.
3 / 5
During a sprint standup, a developer says: "I want to flag _____ might cause a regression in the payment flow — we changed the decimal rounding logic yesterday." Which option correctly uses a wh-nominal clause?
What is correct here. A wh-nominal clause (also called a free relative clause) uses a wh-word as both the connector and part of the clause's meaning. What means "the thing that" and can function as the direct object of a reporting verb. Structure: verb + what/who/how/whether + [clause]. Examples in tech contexts: "The logs show what triggered the cascade failure." / "We need to agree on how we will handle the schema migration." / "The question is whether we deploy tonight or wait until Monday." Why not the others: that introduces a content clause where the content is known; which requires an antecedent noun; how would need to be followed by a full clause with a subject and verb ("how this might cause…").
4 / 5
An RFC (Request for Comments) document includes: "The authors recommend _____ all API consumers migrate to the v3 endpoints before the deprecation deadline of Q4 2026." Which is grammatically correct?
Recommend that introduces a nominal that-clause with the mandative subjunctive — the base form of the verb (no -s, no -ed, no auxiliary) regardless of the subject. This is the formal register used in RFCs, technical specifications, and legal/policy documents. Examples: "We recommend that the service use exponential backoff." (not "uses") / "The spec requires that all responses include a Content-Type header." Other verbs that trigger the mandative subjunctive: require, suggest, propose, insist, demand, mandate, specify. The mandative subjunctive is more common in American English; British English often uses "should": "We recommend that all consumers should migrate…" Both are accepted in formal technical writing. Option B ("recommend for… to") is informal and non-standard in this context.
5 / 5
A system design document contains: "_____ we deploy the gateway before the backend services are ready remains a significant operational risk that should be addressed in the rollout plan." Which nominal clause starter is correct?
Whether introduces a nominal clause expressing a binary question or uncertainty — it is the correct choice when the clause functions as a subject or object and presents an open question. Structure: Whether + [clause] + is/remains/has been + [noun/adjective]. The sentence presents an unresolved question (deploy early or not?) as a risk. More examples from tech writing: "Whether the cache invalidation is synchronous or asynchronous affects the consistency guarantees." / "The team debated whether to use REST or GraphQL for the public API." Why not the others: if introduces conditional clauses and cannot be a nominal subject ("If we deploy… remains a risk" is ungrammatical); when and since are adverbial conjunctions of time and reason respectively, and cannot function as nominal clause subjects in this structure.