We can do the remove and install in two days. The build will take a week. I'd like to introduce the new hire.

If these sentences grate on your nerves, you're not alone. Mark Lander of Old Saybrook, Conn., sent them to me to illustrate the current trend of turning verbs into nouns.

Mark's message was a good "read," and my first "react" to his big "reveal" was that this "transform" of verbs to nouns represents an epic "fail" for our language.

After all, most of us are sick of fund-raisers who vow to make "the ask" of a donor, of accountants who say they'll adjust "the spend" in a contract, and interviewers who praise a job-seeker as a good "first meet."

Now it's getting personal. A friend recently said he was sending me "an invite" to a party. One of my students wrote that the Brown vs. Board of Education decision represented "a depart" from the doctrine of separate but equal. My tennis partner congratulated me on "a good get."

Such conversion of verbs to nouns sounds like some kind of 21st century telegraphese, as if we were being charged for each letter we speak or write, e.g., "There's a disconnect. Need a solve."

And, come to think of it, our newest form of telegraphy — texting, with its obsessive demand for concision — most certainly has something to do with the proliferation of newly-nouned verbs.

We can also blame it on the fast pace of everyday life and plain old laziness. What newly engaged ingenue is going to bother tapping out "I got a commitment!" when "I got a commit!" will suffice.

But here's the big "reveal": English speakers have been converting verbs to nouns since the dawn of the language. In fact, we use many of them every day without even thinking about it. The common nouns "run," "sweep," "swim," "hit," "jump" and "walk" were converted from verbs centuries ago.

Moreover, such verb-to-noun shifts might serve a valuable purpose. Writing a few years ago in The New York Times, linguist Henry Hitchings observed that using a verb as a noun can make an action more concise, vivid and immediate. They pack a punch. "I have a solve," Hitchings writes, "will sound jauntier and more pragmatic than 'I have a solution.'"

So will we soon hear people speaking of "the create," the "recover" and the "inspire? Perhaps so.

And, while such conversions might give us a "shudder" (another verb turned into a noun, by the way), maybe it's time for a big reconsider in our attitude toward them.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.