There are enough rules about when to use a comma and when not to use one to drive any normal person insane. Have you ever noticed that sometimes there are commas between adjectives and sometimes there aren’t? Why is that?
Order of Adjectives
Did you know that there is an order in which adjectives should appear? I never knew about this, but this order is pretty much common sense. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but normally your sentence sounds really strange if this order isn’t followed. Not many sentences will use all of the below kinds of adjectives.
1) Determiner – articles (a, an, the), possessives (his, hers, yours), number (fifteen, several, few), demonstratives (this, that, those)
2) Quantity or number – many, four
3) Observation or opinion – beautiful, ugly, amazing, priceless, heroic, soft
4) Size – big, little, huge, petite
5) Shape – round, square, flat
6) Age – old, young, ancient
7) Color – red, blue, yellow
8) Proper adjective – Italian, Russian, Mexican
9) Origin or material– wooden, plastic, steel
10) Qualifier – This could be a noun used as an adjective to identify the type of noun – cashmere sweater, wax paper, mineral makeup. It could also be an adjective ending in -ing that describes the noun’s purpose – marching band, wedding dress, chopping board.
Example: The three sleek black panthers wandered through the jungle.
Think about it. Would you ever say: The black sleek three panthers wandered through the jungle? No. The order of the adjectives in that sentence is horrendous. The correct order of the adjectives is pretty much common sense. And please notice that there aren’t any commas after the adjectives.
Coordinate and Noncoordinate Adjectives
The crisp red, white, and blue flag whipped back and forth in the wind.
The store is giving away samples of its popular beige mineral makeup.
In the above sentences, there are commas between some of the adjectives but not between others. What is the reason for this? It all depends on whether the adjectives are coordinate or noncoordinate as well as what category each adjective comes from. Please also notice that red, white, and blue are from the same category (color) while crisp is from another category (observation or opinion).
Coordinate adjectives are also called paired adjectives. These adjectives precede the noun and each one describes the noun. When they are from the same category, each one carries equal importance and they can appear in any order. The sentence also makes sense if the word “and” is placed between the adjectives.
The slippery, treacherous roads caused by the wet snowfall made driving dangerous. (Correct)
The slippery and treacherous roads caused by the wet snowfall made driving dangerous. (Correct)
The treacherous, slippery roads caused by the wet snowfall made driving dangerous. (Correct)
The treacherous and slippery roads caused by the wet snowfall made driving dangerous. (Correct)
Noncoordinate adjectives (also known as cumulative adjectives) must appear in a specific order. These adjectives build upon one another and together modify the noun. Remember the order of adjectives? They do not make sense if “and” is placed between them, and one adjective is more important than the others.
Tonya was having trouble finding her blue cashmere sweater. (Correct)
Tonya was having trouble finding her blue and cashmere sweater. (Incorrect)
Tonya was having trouble finding her cashmere blue sweater. (Incorrect)
Now look at the flag sentence: The crisp red, white, and blue flag whipped back and forth in the wind. There are commas between red, white, and blue but not between crisp and red. Crisp is an adjective from the category observation or opinion and it is describing the color red, not the flag, so there is no comma needed. Also, you could not say The crisp and red, white, and blue flag whipped back and forth in the wind.
Neither could you couldn’t say The blue, white, and crisp red flag whipped back and forth in the wind because that sounds rather awkward. Is that just because we are used to saying red, white, and blue in that specific order? No. When you refer back to the order of adjectives, you will see that the observation or opinion (crisp) is supposed to come before the color, not in the middle of the different colors. If there was an observation or opinion adjective before each color, then the colors could be arranged in a different order along with the adjective describing each one.
Now let’s take a look at another sentence: The store is giving away samples of its popular beige mineral makeup. Can you put “and” between the adjectives?
The store is giving away samples of its popular and beige and mineral makeup. Definitely not.
What happens if you rearrange the order of these adjectives? The store is giving away samples of its mineral beige popular makeup. As you can see, that makes no sense at all.
Popular is an observation or opinion, beige is in the category of color, and mineral is the qualifier for the noun. Since these adjectives come from different categories, they are noncoordinate and must appear in a certain order. No commas are needed.
Closing Notes
Remember, there are exceptions to every rule just to make English more confusing for us. If the order of your adjectives sounds wrong and awkward, then it probably is. Also, never put a comma after your determiner or after your final adjective.
You could have a character that uses his own unique order of adjectives, meaning that this character never uses adjectives in the right order. Whether it would be on purpose or not would be up to you. His sentences would always sound awkward though. If your character ignores the rules, please be polite and let your editor know before she (or he) goes over your manuscript.
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