Getting words in the right order in English: Part Three

Nouns

As we saw in Part Two, we can put two nouns together in English to create compound nouns. But we are not limited to just two nouns. We can precede a noun with three, four even five other nouns, a common occurrence in business vocabulary.  We can say for example:

A nuclear power plant.
The production department quality procedure.
A two-door company car.
A manufacturing company health and safety manual.
A company insurance policy plan

Over the years, I regularly see learners having difficulty putting the words of expressions like these into the correct order. I misunderstand what they are saying and furthermore, they misunderstand texts because they do not translate the meaning correctly. The problem is knowing where the principal noun is (i.e. the subject or object of the sentence).

The number one rule you must always remember is that the most important word is the noun (the subject or object of the sentence) and this is always the last one in the list. Every word before the last one functions as an adjective and is therefore additional information and can be removed from the sentence. The last word (subject/object of the sentence) cannot of course be removed without making the sentence incomprehensible. In conclusion, you need to read the phrase backwards!

Examples
1 . A nuclear power plant.  
We are talking about a plant (factory). What type of plant? A power plant (not manufacturing). What type of power plant? A nuclear power plant.  The most important word/noun is last (plant). The second most important word is next to plant (power) and the first word is the least important (nuclear).

2.  The production department quality procedure.  
We are talking about a procedure. What type of procedure? A quality procedure. What type of quality procedure? A department quality procedure. Which department’s quality procedure? The production department quality procedure.
(We don’t have to put an apostrophe ‘s’ on department because it is part of the name of the procedure but we can say: the production department’s quality procedure).

3.  A two-door company car.
We are talking about a car. What type of car? A company car. What type of company car? A two-door company car.  
Note: Door is not plural because it is functioning as an adjective and we never make adjectives plural.
 
4.  A production plant health and safety manual.
We are talking about a manual. What type of manual? A health and safety manual. What type of health and safety manual? A plant (factory) health and safety manual. What type of plant? A production plant health and safety manual.

5.  A company insurance policy plan.
We are talking about a plan. What type of plan? A policy plan. What type of policy plan? An insurance policy plan. What type of insurance policy plan? A company insurance policy plan.
 
 Conclusion
Remember the rule: the most important word is last and the least important word is first.  If you want to contract, you can remove words before the last word, but you must always keep the last one because it’s your object/subject of the sentence!
For example, a golden Labrador is contracted to a Labrador in English, not a Golden because golden is an adjective.
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Remember this rule next time you want to write a production department quality procedure!