Sorry guys. I haven't written a thing for over a fortnight, which is terrible. But, enough is enough. Tonight I am feeling proactive and I am writing about how to put adjectives in the right order. But, this is not an easy task and it is not mathematics either.
Let's start by saying that we are not likely to be forced to write more than four adjectives in the same sentence. However, whether you are supposed to put two, three, four or more, you'd better know how to put them in a logical order that sounds natural.
- When more than one adjective comes before a noun, the adjectives are normally in a particular order. Adjectives which describe opinions or attitudes (e.g. amazing) usually come first, before more neutral, factual ones (e.g. red): She was wearing an amazing red coat. Not: …
red amazing coat - If we don't want to emphasise any one of the adjectives, the most usual sequence of adjectives is:
- 1opinionunusual, lovely, beautiful2sizebig, small, tall3physical qualitythin, rough, untidy4shaperound, square, rectangular5ageyoung, old, youthful6colourblue, red, pink7patternStriped, patterned, checkered,…8OriginDutch, Japanese, Turkish9materialmetal, wood, plastic10typegeneral-purpose, four-sided, U-shaped11purposecleaning, hammering, cooking
Examples:
- She had beautiful long thick wavy dark swept back hair.
- He is a handsome tall thin Swedish guy with short curly layered hair.
- He was wearing a lovely thick, black and white, patterned, woollen sweater.
It is not complicated, but remember that where you have physical quality, you can also find adjectives related to temperature or condition and that if you want to emphasize an adjective you might want to put it in a different position and last but not least, you must bear in mind that the more general an adjective is, the further from the noun it will be and the more specific the adjective is, the closer it will be to the noun.
