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I just ate some spicy Thai delicious food. (Or was it delicious, spicy Thai food?) Because of that large meal, I can’t comfortably zip my black small dress. (Or is it my small black dress?)
This is one of the linguistic rabbit holes into which we writers often fall. And with the recent increased fascination with Royal Family news, it’s timely.
What I call “adjective confusion” has a formal name: the royal order of adjectives. It doesn’t have anything to do with Harry and Meghan, though—unless you’re writing a sentence like this: Harry and Meghan are attractive, intelligent, famous people who live in the sunny, warm, celebrity-studded American city of Montecito, California.
The so-called proper order of adjectives calls for the following placement, although variations do exist: opinion-size-age-shape-color-origin-material-purpose noun. The official rules are often unknown to native English speakers; many of us employ them by instinct honed over time. Teachers may encourage English language learners to memorize the proper order of adjectives, undoubtedly causing headaches and eye rolls.
How about this? “I bought a lovely small old rusted green metal frying pan.”
Granted, we don’t write sentences like this, and that’s for the best. We do, however, employ the royal order in shorter sentences: He has short black hair. We stayed at a drafty little lake cabin. My grandmother has an impressive antique silver jewelry collection.
Discussion of adjective order invariably leads to a discussion of commas, specifically comma use with adjectives. Here, we find a new and enjoyable rabbit hole: cumulative and coordinate adjectives and how to punctuate (or not punctuate) them. But we’ll leave that one for another time.
Amy, a caucasian woman with brown hair and glasses, smiles facing the camera. Behind her is a large tree.
Amy Cecil Holm is Allegory Editing’s resident Copy Editor and Proofreader. As a copy editor and proofreader, Amy draws upon more than three decades of teaching college English to help authors polish their prose. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in creative writing and has worked as a journalist, technical writer, and educator. Amy has taught courses in English composition, literature, creative writing, journalistic writing, business writing, and developmental reading, among others. She has a keen understanding of grammar, punctuation, and diction and uses her careful attention to detail to help prepare manuscripts for submission and publication.