You did! And what a great example, haha! ;)

Here's the link: http://www.esl-library.com/lessons.php?cmd=viewlesson&lesson_id=1037&section_id=4

You're very welcome!

You're welcome, Dawn! Thanks for your comment.

Hi Guadalupe,

I like your example sentence! :)

Your punctuation is completely correct. The last comma before the 'and' is optional, but I prefer to include it myself.

Thanks for your comment,
Tanya

Hi Damon,

Yes, it depends on the type of adjective. I'm glad it's less confusing for you now.

The relationship between the adjective and noun is still important for the basic adjective sentence patterns in English: 1) Adj + N (She has a new car) and 2) Be + Adj (Her car is new). That doesn't affect multiple-word adjectives in pattern #1, but note that we use 'and' in pattern #2. (She has a shiny, new car. / Her car is shiny and new.)

Tanya

Hi Diego,

If there are two adjectives of the same type, you can choose the order you want. For example, you can say 'an ugly, expensive hat' OR 'an expensive, ugly hat'.

But with colours, it's a little different, because we usually use 'and' to join colours. So I would say 'an ugly, yellow and red hat' OR 'an ugly, red and yellow hat'.

If you want to use three colours, it would look like this: 'an ugly, red, white, and yellow hat' with the colours in any order you want.

Hope that helps!
Tanya

Hi Klark, I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Was this something you saw in the post?

Thanks for sharing that great post. I think that cumulative vs. non-cumulative is often up for debate, which is why using commas between different categories from the 'royal' order of adjectives is often up to the speaker! For example:

• a long velvet drape (= correct. Is the velvet drape long? Yes, so this cumulative adjective example doesn't need a comma.)
• a long, velvet drape (= also correct. Is the drape long and velvet? Yes, so this non-cumulative adjective example needs a comma.)

I think it often depends how you look at it. I'd teach the basic rules to low-level learners, but by all means, get into the discussion and debate of comma vs. no comma with higher-level learners! These things are what makes English difficult but fascinating. :)

It's also worth noting that the trend these days is moving away from 'unnecessary' comma usage, so the example without a comma is probably the more popular choice these days.

Hi Luis,

You could say either 'cold, snowy weather' or 'snowy, cold weather' because they are both opinion adjectives. I would say that 'cold, snowy weather' sounds more natural just because temperature adjectives like 'hot' and 'cold' are more common.

Good question about 'colorful'! It is usually used in the colour position, as in this example from the post above:
We browsed through the many antique, colourful, silk dresses in the boutique. (age, colour, material)

Be aware that some people may argue that 'colourful' is an opinion adjective, but I think it sounds more natural used as a colour adjective. For example, 'delicious, colorful candy' sounds more natural than 'colorful, delicious candy' in my opinion.

Hope that helps!

Great question. 'Worried about' is correct. 'Worried of' is not. Some verb + preposition combinations are phrasal verbs, while others are just common expressions. Unfortunately, most of these involve memorization and practice!

In my blog post on phrasal verbs, I give a few tips on how to teach/learn them, and there are also links to common phrasal verb lists at the end: https://blog.ellii.com/2013/08/08/how-do-you-teach-phrasal-verbs/

Hope that helps!

Good questions!

Yes, 'new' can be used for age in objects. For example, we can say 'a new car' compared to 'an old car.' For people, we sometimes use 'new' for age with babies, as in 'Congratulations on your new family member!'

I'm not sure what you mean by general and specific opinion. Do you mean if it's only your opinion or if it's an opinion shared by many people? In any case, I'd say it doesn't matter because it won't affect the order.

Hope that helps!

If the descriptors are in different categories, follow the rules mentioned above.

E.g., She was a beautiful, young, Japanese woman.

If the descriptors are all in the opinion category, it doesn't matter what order you put them in. But the descriptors you mentioned could fall into categories (long-haired for shape and black-skinned for color), so long-haired, black-skinned sounds best in that order.

Hi Ross,

That's a very interesting point. In my opinion, to emphasize 'rubber,' I would keep the same order but italicize the word 'rubber' to show emphasis. In speaking, I would say the word 'rubber' more forcefully.

'No, the big, red, rubber ball.'

I'm sure that some people would put the adjective that they wanted to emphasize before the others, as you suggest, but it does sound a little unnatural to me. Separating it with the following comma might not always work because most style guides advocate using commas in a list of serial adjectives, so there should already be commas after all the adjectives. Sorry to hear you were being harassed! Grammar definitely isn't always black and white.

Thank you.
For me, the comma would be less of an issue than you suggested. I do use commas to separate coordinate adjectives, but omit them for lists of non-coordinate adjectives placed in their 'natural' order.

Hi Ruby,

I understand your confusion. You can only reverse the order when the coordinate adjectives are of the same type (funny, kind or kind, funny = opinion adj, opinion adj). So the 'reverse test' I suggested in the comment below will only work for coordinate adjectives that are the same type (e.g., all opinion adjectives or all size adjectives or all shape adjectives etc.).

For coordinate adjectives that are not the same type (e.g., intelligent, young = opinion, age) you can't reverse the order, but they still need commas. All coordinate adjectives that are used in a series take commas, so 'intelligent, young, Canadian editor' is correct. The 'and' test is a better test for all types of coordinate adjectives (i.e., the editor is intelligent and young and Canadian).

To add to the confusion, while using commas is best practice, many people don't bother. So you might see coordinate adjectives used in a series without commas! But most grammar guides recommend using commas with coordinate adjectives, so it's what I recommend we teach our students. Hope that helps!

Hi Kes,

Good question. Adjectives that describe a position (e.g., left and right) need to come right before the noun. I think it's probably rare that they're used along with other adjectives, but it is possible. For example, we'd usually just say 'the left side of the couch' or 'your right arm.' An example of multiple adjectives could be 'his big, pale left leg.' I wouldn't even put a comma between 'pale' and 'left' there. To me, 'left leg' works as the noun, much as 'sleeping bag' does. If you had to put 'left' into a category, I'd say 'purpose' is the best one because it is specifying what the noun is rather than describing it.

Hi Bàrbara,

Most people would put 'antique' in the 'age' category. For example, you could say 'I bought a beautiful, antique, gold vase last weekend' (= opinion/qualifier, age, colour) whereas 'antique, beautiful, gold vase' doesn't sound natural.

Hi Sue, the Skateboarding lesson has an exercise on adjective order on page 4 of the PDF, but as this post was written long before we had a digital platform, I hadn't noticed that we didn't have that task available in the digital version. We can't do sort-type tasks on our digital platform yet, but hopefully we will be able to one day. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I've replaced the Skateboard lesson in the post with the Adjectives (Grammar Practice Worksheets) lesson since the latter has an adjective-order task available in both versions. Happy teaching!

That's an excellent question your students asked, Myra! My feeling is that the adjective "traditional" includes the meaning of both age and origin, which is why it would be correct to say "a long, traditional, white dress" or "a long, white, traditional dress."

I think we can mostly rule out purpose since "a long, white, traditional, silk dress" sounds fine but "a long, white, silk, traditional dress" doesn't sound as natural to me.

You're welcome! Glad it was helpful.