This week you will learn when you should add commas between adjectives, and when you shouldn’t.
A good friend of mine who has been a writer for years recently took a job in which she has to copyedit. One day she IM’ed me: "What is up with the commas between adjectives? My boss seems to always put them in–but I don’t think they are needed. Are there rules for this?
Consider these two examples:
My dear old Aunt Sally
My dear, old Aunt Sally
Is the comma in the second example really necessary?
Ahhh, the kind of question that warms a long-time copyeditor and grammar teacher’s heart. Yes, my dear, there are rules for this. But most native speakers of English have never heard of them. We simply rely on our "ear."
The rules start with the official order of adjectives. The large blue dinosaur just sounds more familiar, more correct, than the blue large dinosaur. We always put size before color when describing something: the gigantic green frog, the large black briefcase.
We can put together long strings of adjectives without any punctuation, as long as we follow the official order of adjectives: the valuable old green Mercedes sedan.
The order is first a, the, or a possessive such as my or Tom’s. Then we put evaluation or opinion, followed by the physical description-size, shape, age, color, texture-followed by where it came from, the material it is made of, and finally its purpose or main use. Oh, and we might have one last item before the noun: another noun that helps identify it.
Thus I can describe Brian’s comfortable big old brown soft Italian leather driving jacket sleeve without using any commas, although that is admittedly going a little over the top.
When do we have to use commas? When we use the adjectives out of order, as in the old, uncomfortable sofa (age before evaluation) as opposed to the uncomfortable old sofa; and when we use two adjectives that are in the same category or that are not part of the official categories: her comfortable, affordable alternative (two evaluations).
Besides order, there is another easy test for whether you need a comma. Can you read it with the word and between the adjectives? If so, you need a comma. Her comfortable and affordable alternative? Yes. My dear and old Aunt Sally? I don’t think so. No comma.
Next time: Do I need a hyphen?
About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Essentials of Access 2000" and "Editing with MS Word 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing. You can reach Jennie at Jenruby@aol.com
Could you parse “their being” and “there being.” and explain why, if being is a gerund or participle and takes a possessive before it do we write “there being no further comment we will close this meeting,” for example.
Could you parse “their being” and “there being.” and explain why, if being is a gerund or participle and takes a possessive before it do we write “there being no further comment we will close this meeting,” for example.
Could you parse “their being” and “there being.” and explain why, if being is a gerund or participle and takes a possessive before it do we write “there being no further comment we will close this meeting,” for example.