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Order of Adjectives in English

Adjectives cannot be written in any order. There are rules, so you should use the following order:


1) Determiner or article:

Determiners -  this, that, these, those, my, mine, your, yours, him, his, her, hers, they, their, Sam's ; or

Articles - a, an, the

2) Opinion adjective

e.g. polite, fun, cute, difficult, hard-working

3) Size, including comparatives and superlatives.

height; e.g. tall, short, high, low; taller, tallest
width; e.g. wide, narrow, thin, slim; wider, widest
length; e.g. long, short; longer, longest
volume; e.g. fat, huge; fatter, fattest

4) Shape

e.g. circular, oval, triangular, square, 5-sided, hexagonal, irregular

5) Age

e.g. new, young, adolescent, teenage, middle-aged, old, ancient

6) Colour

e.g. red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, grey, black, black and white, light blue, dark red, pale blue, reddish brown, off-white, bright green, warm yellow

7) Nationality

e.g. Hong Kong, Chinese, English, American, Canadian, Japanese

8) Religion

e.g. Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Moslem, pagan, atheist

9) Material

e.g. wood, plastic, metal, ceramic, paper, silk

10) Noun used as an adjective

e.g. campus (as in 'campus activities')

11) The noun that the adjectives are describing.

e.g. A wonderful old Italian clock

Although it is possible to write a sentence that uses all the categories; e.g. 'my beautiful, long, curving, new, pink, western, Christian, silk wedding dress', it is bad style as it is too long. Try to use less than five adjectives in a single list. Therefore you could say "Have you seen my beautiful new cream silk wedding dress? It's long and curving, and is in western Christian style."

Here are some examples of nouns modified with three adjectives in the correct order based on the list above. Notice that the adjectives are not separated by commas.

A big square blue box. (size - shape - color)
A disgusting pink plastic ornament. (opinion - color - material)
Some slim new French trousers. (size - age - origin)

For some practice with adjective order, follow the links below:

http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/adjord.htm

http://www.better-english.com/grammar/adjord.htm

More stereotypes...

Heaven is where the police are British,

the chefs Italian,

the mechanics German,

the lovers French,

and it's all organized by the Swiss.



Hell is where the police are German,

the chefs are British,

the mechanics French,

the lovers Swiss,

and it is all organized by the Italians.

Stereotypes

Here is link to a funny video on stereotypes which we might see in class if there is time:. It compares Italians to the rest of Europe:

http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html

Questions and Auxiliaries

Here are a couple of interesting links to practice auxiliaries and questions:

A quiz to practice word order in questions:

http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/blgrquiz_questionforms.htm

- Yes/No Questions:

http://esl.about.com/b/2010/10/22/are-you-learning-english-yes-i-am-no-im-not.htm?nl=1

- Auxiliaries:

http://esl.about.com/od/grammarintermediate/a/a_auxiliary.htm

and an auxiliary verb quiz:

http://esl.about.com/library/quiz/bl_auxiliary.htm