EDITING 101: 52 – Adjectives – and the Commas That Go With Them…

Posted on by Chris The Story Reading Ape

Adjectives – and the Commas That Go With Them…

So, you’re merrily typing along and your character wants to put on a blue, silk, handmade scarf. Oh, wait a minute. Is that a silk, blue, handmade scarf or a handmade, silk, blue scarf? A blue, handmade, silk scarf? Oh dear!

Aha! Super Editor to the rescue!

(Imagine me swooping over your house and flying in your window, red pen in hand!)

(Ok, now imagine me 10 pounds lighter. Another ten. Ok, that’s better.)

Adjective order in English is not completely random, although what we’re going to discuss are more along the lines of guidelines rather than rules. The exception is when you’re speaking of words of general description along with words describing a physical state. These are known as coordinate adjectives and require commas. The order can be changed without altering the meaning and you are free to put the one you want to emphasize first:

  • Melissa has a round, yellow footstool.

  • Melissa has a yellow, round footstool.

You can tell when you have coordinate adjectives because you can use the word “and” between them (instead of the comma) and they make sense with the order reversed.

Supposedly, native English speakers have an intuitive sense about how adjectives should be ordered and automatically handle them correctly, but some writers seem to lack the gene that turned on that “intuitive” sense and struggle with it. 🙂 You may see some slight variations in this “intuitive” list, but not many. And generally, this order has remained consistent over a long period of time within the English language.

Adjectives that add more and more information about a noun are known as cumulative adjectives—the adjectives piggyback on each other and build up a mind picture of the object. The order cannot be changed:

  • Four large purple shapes slithered toward us.

  • Large purple four shapes slithered toward us.

  • Purple four large shapes slithered toward us.

You can see that only the first one makes any sense. The rule is that a stack of cumulative adjectives generally occurs in the following order: number (five, one), opinion/judgement/attitude (useful, lovely, ugly), size (big, small), age (young, old), shape (square, squiggly), color (cobalt, yellow), origin (Canadian, solar), material (granite, wool), and purpose (shopping, running).

You’ll notice that there are no commas in the list of cumulative adjectives. This remains true no matter how long the list of adjectives is, unless you wish to add some emphasis between two coordinate adjectives WITHIN the list of cumulative adjectives:

  • An ugly large heavy dirty old blue striped British nylon sleeping bag.

  • Pamela tripped over the tiny, new European plastic toy Edvard had left on the floor. (Comma added for emphasis—“tiny and new” and “new and tiny” mean the same thing.)

  • When you’re looking at six ugly huge black Martian space monsters, run away quickly!

Granted, these examples are just for fun. Very few writers would create a sentence that used so many adjectives!

Next week we’ll discuss ‘Internet Tracking’

Susan

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48 thoughts on “EDITING 101: 52 – Adjectives – and the Commas That Go With Them…”

  1. Don’t know where I came across it but a piece of advice I found somewhere stated: adjectives must be in this order:-
    opinion – size – age – shape – colour – origin – material – purpose – noun.
    Therefore blue, big monsters can’t exist – but big, blue monsters can.

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  4. Pingback: EDITING 101: 52 – Adjectives – and the Commas That Go With Them… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog – I Suck at Writing

  7. My comma (mis)use has nothing to do adjectives, cumulative or otherwise. I have issues with commas, and tend to use entirely too many, much to the dismay of anyone who’s ever edited my writing. Give me a bucket of commas, and I can make a sentence run on for pages and pages. I must be stopped! 😖

    I shall try to be more cognizant of the rules … again. Thanks! 😉

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    • You’re welcome, Felicia! I also prefer more commas than what is typically preferred right now. 😦 I’m slowly learning to leave them out when the meaning is clear without them, but many times I add in commas where others would not! 🙂

      I think that in general, yes, you *can* have too many commas, but they will rarely cause confusion in your writing. However, having too few commas can lead to problems.

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  10. This was helpful. I use commas based on how I talk and when I pause in speech, I pause in my commas too. I am probably right half the time. Lately, much has been written about over use of commas, so I have cut back. EX; I would no longer put a comma with round, yellow or yellow, round.A few years ago I would have, though.

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      • Sadly, I think grammar, in general, is declining. Many seem oblivious to it. Some of the things that really bug me are: aloud/allowed; to/two/ too; there, their, they’re; no/know…etc. Facebook is riddled with these. It drives me nuts. Don’t try to correct them, though. They seem to be proud of their ignorance and offended if you are a grammar guru, lol. Ok, off the soapbox I come. 🙂

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        • I don’t comment on people’s spelling and grammar on social media because I understand that they’re casual platforms, generally, and perhaps people aren’t as careful as you’d hope they would be elsewhere. But yes, some of them do seem to be proud of it! Oh well. 😀

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          • I usually don’t either. Others do and I see their replies. I probably spend way too much time on Facebook. No, I definitely do if I’m being honest. When I am fed up, I log off and do something else. 🙂

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