Have you heard about the required order of adjectives in English? A few years ago, a paragraph from Mark Forsyth’s book “The Elements of Eloquence” that described this regular order of adjectives went viral on Twitter. The concept pops up again every year or so and blows people’s minds anew.

He said, “You can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you  mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.” Now, I’ve loved more than one of Forsyth’s various books — in fact, I should have him on the show — but he was a little, shall we say, extravagant in his description of this particular phenomenon.

First, I’ll argue that you sound a bit like a maniac if you say it the “right” way. I mean, who has a knife like that? And further, if you do, who describes it in such detail? But second, do you really sound like a maniac if you instead say you have a “green rectangular knife” instead of a “rectangular green knife”? I think not. 

Now, what Forsythe was talking about is that most native English speakers instinctively put adjectives in the right order without thinking about it. You just know that, even though they both sound icky, for some reason, “the ugly brown goop” sounds like better English than “the brown ugly goop.” In fact, it’s not something we’re taught in school, and if you haven’t already seen these viral posts, you’re probably surprised to learn that there is a quasi-official proper order for adjectives.  It goes like this: opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, and purpose. 

• Opinion (e.g., ugly, beautiful)
• Size (e.g., big, little)
• Age (e.g., young, old)
• Shape (e.g., square, round)
• Color (e.g., black, yellow)
• Origin (e.g., British, American)
• Material (e.g., polyester, Styrofoam) 
• Purpose (e.g., swimming, as in a swimming pool, sewing, as in a sewing machine)

Regardless of whether we know about this quasi-official order, we just naturally talk about an old plastic box, and a beautiful black sweater.

But let’s say you’re learning English or you want to remember the order for some reason. The way I do it is that the first letters of all those qualifiers spell something that almost sounds like a word to me — OSASCOMP: opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose.

Now, you actually don’t want to string together too many adjectives before a noun like Forsyth did to make his point, but sometimes three adjectives in a row can make sense. For example, you could write that Aardvark threw his “old round wooden ball” at Squiggly.

But as you may have already gathered, there are a lot of exceptions to these rules, especially in the physical descriptions — size, age, shape, and color — which is why I call them quasi-official.

For example, to me, “the square green tile” and “the green square tile” both sound right. It just depends on where you want to put the emphasis. If I have a wall that’s mostly covered with green tiles that are all different shapes, then I might point one out by saying, “Look at this square green tile.” But if I have a wall with square tiles that are different colors, I might say, “Look at this green square tile.”

There’s also a different suggested order out there that switches the order, putting shape before age instead of after it. I’ve looked and looked at the difference, and there are sentences where one order seems better and sentences where the other order seems better:

“The old round vase” (with the OSASCOMP order) sounds better than “The round old vase” and “He sent fresh long-stemmed roses” (with OSASCOMP order) sounds better than “He sent long-stemmed fresh rose.”

But some examples sound better with the other order that puts shape before age. For example, “the round antique vase” sounds better to me than “the antique round vase.”

But none of them sounds horribly wrong either.

The other areas seem to hold up better. For example, “the young American singer” sounds right and “the American young singer” sounds quite wrong.  And “the beautiful wool rug” sounds better than “the wool beautiful rug.” 

The bottom line is that if you’re in doubt about how to write your adjectives, there’s a somewhat useful suggested order, and I use OSASCOMP to remember that it’s opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, and purpose. But know that there are times when you can deviate from the order, and there is another alternative suggested order too.

When to use commas between adjectives

Next, you might be wondering whether you need commas between all those adjectives. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t.

Coordinate adjectives do need a comma

If each adjective modifies the noun independently, then you put a comma between them. The best way to test this is to see if the sentence still sounds right if you switch the order of the adjectives, and if you can put the word “and” between them.

For example, let’s say I want to write that Squiggly is a conscientious, pleasant  friend. Well, I could also say, “Squiggly is a pleasant, conscientious friend,” and that “Squiggly is a conscientious and pleasant friend,” both of which sound completely natural. Since that’s the case, I do use a comma between the two adjectives. Squiggly is a conscientious, pleasant friend. These kinds of adjectives are called coordinate adjectives.

Cumulative adjectives don’t need a comma

But in all my examples in the OSASCOMP section, the sentences don’t sound right if you apply these tests. For example, let’s say I wrote that “The square green tile fell off the wall.” Well, if I said, “The green square tile fell off the wall,” it sounds a little weird but it still kind of works, especially in some situations like the one where my wall is square tiles of different colors. But it definitely doesn’t sound natural if I say, “The square and green tile fell off the wall.” You almost wonder if I’m talking about two different tiles. It just doesn’t sound like Standard English. 

Since the “and” test doesn’t work, that’s a sign that these are what’s called cumulative adjectives, and you don’t use a comma between cumulative adjectives. Cumulative adjectives build on each other to describe the noun. For example, “beautiful” describes the wool rug. As The Chicago Manual of Style explains, “phrases such as ‘white brick house’ and ‘wrinkled canvas jacket’ are unpunctuated because the adjectives are not coordinate: they have no logical connection in sense (a white house could be made of many different materials; so could a wrinkled jacket).”  

The two-rule test for commas between adjectives

So when you’re looking at a series of adjectives before a noun and you’re trying to decide whether to use a comma, remember to ask yourself if you can reverse the order of the adjectives and if you can put the word “and” between the adjectives. 

If you have a sentence like “Squiggly is a conscientious, pleasant friend,” and the answer to both those questions is yes — you can reverse the order and put the word “and” between them — you use a comma. But if you have a sentence like “The green square tile fell off the wall,” and the answer to either of those questions is no — you can’t reverse the order or you can’t put the word “and” between them — you don’t use a comma. 

Sources

“Extended Rules for Commas.” Purdue OWL. (accessed June 22, 2024).
“Coordinate Adjectives.” The Chicago Manual of Style, 5.91 (accessed June 22, 2024).