Adjective Placement

Adjectives are words that are added to the name (or substitute/pronoun) of a thing including a living thing like (just to name one) a human being to describe the thing more fully or sometimes more beautifully.

If I want to use two or more adjectives in a description, how shall I determine the order of these adjectives?

Below is an article about Adjective Placement in English Grammar Lexicon - a blog (in Real Life Log ) providing ‏Grammar and Usage Guide (which is noted to have stopped publishing new articles since its last one on February 17, 2007) together with my comments.

Where To Place The Adjective?
Written February 01. 2007 in Uncategorized

Adjective Placement When using more than one adjective to describe a noun place the adjectives in the following order before the noun. NOTE: We usually use no more than three adjectives preceding a noun.

1. Opinion Example: an interesting book, a boring lecture

2. Dimension Example: a big apple, a thin wallet

3. Age Example: a new car, a modern building, an ancient ruin

4. Shape Example: a square box, an oval mask, a round ball

5. Color Example: a pink hat, a blue book, a black coat

6. Origin Example: some Italian shoes, a Canadian town, an American car

7. Material Example: a wooden box, a woolen sweater, a plastic toy

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 wonderful old Italian clock. (opinion - age - origin)
· A big square blue box. (dimension - shape - color)
· A disgusting pink plastic ornament. (opinion - color - material)
· Some slim new French trousers. (dimension - age - origin)
Tags:
Comments
Kengt, Penang
Written February 01. 2007
Shown below is the order given by FADZILAH AMIN in THE STAR’S MIND OUR ENGLISH of Wednesday January 31, 2007 for comparison:-

Quote

Michael Swan in Practical English Usage gives the order in which the different kinds of adjectives should appear before a noun. His order is: 1. colour, 2. origin, 3. material, 4. purpose, with other kinds of adjectives to go before those. The Collins Cobuild English Grammar (CCEG) uses different terms for the order, ie: 1. qualitative, 2. colour, 3. classifying. Your first sentence has therefore the correct order, according to these two books, i.e.: a) My uncle bought a beautiful antique Japanese wooden table. I will summarise what kinds of adjectives (according to Swan and CCEG, respectively) are in the sentence, to justify their order: 1. beautiful – other/qualitative 2. antique – other/classifying 3. Japanese – origin/classifying 4. wooden – material/classifying According to CCEG, the main difference between a qualitative adjective and a classifying one is that the first is gradable (e.g. we can say "very beautiful" or "less beautiful") and the second is not (e.g. we don’t say "very antique" or "less Japanese" or "more wooden"), although some adjectives can be either qualitative or classifying according to the context. Unquote

For order controversy, please refer to my earlier post of February 5, 2008 on "What’s the right order?".