No, we shan’t talk about kings, dragons, or any other fantasy motifs in this article. We shall talk about the basic grammar principle that involves the use of adjectives and adverbs.
Although native English speakers have these rules running in their veins, I find it appealing to share with you how to adequately use these two-blade daggers in the fight for a perfect style and concise writing. If you had explored the subjects of adjectives and adverbs, you must have found the advice to use them scarcely or not to use them all if anyhow possible because their excess can suck out the meaning of your sentence. The goal is to use only the words that complement your message. Everything else will make the reader find it hard to break through a dense forest of surplus notions, which might end up with them putting away your book and never taking it in their hands again. Well… Maybe not, but still…
Anyway, let’s cut to the chase.
Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns to clarify, delimit, describe, expand, and qualify them. However, clever use of verbs can help you reduce their presence in your manuscript, which is a different subject than what we’re covering here. Here, we are talking about how to adequately use them if you find them inevitable, either for stylistic or semantic purposes. More accurately, we are talking about how to use more of them in a single sentence.
Let’s start with an example:
A kind short round young blue Japanese chocolate predictable bunny jumped over the ugly tall square old green Arabic wooden fence.
Hand on heart, these are enough adjectives for a whole chapter, but we managed to get them into one sentence. You might notice how awkward the sentence looks and you might also notice that we don’t use any commas. Truth is, regardless of how awkward it looks, the sentence is grammatically correct.
Now, let us change certain things.
A lovely, beautiful tall young purple-and-orange Japanese chocolate, iron, and marble bunny jumped over the nasty, ugly tall rectangular-and-square plastic, rubber, and textile fence.
Why did we have to use commas and hyphens?
The answer lies in the Royal Order of Adjectives. It suggests that the adjectives must be used in such a way that they explain the nouns and pronouns in this order:
- Observation (opinion)
- Size
- Shape
- Age
- Color
- Origin
- Material
- Qualifier
As an assignment, you can examine these eight categories on your behalf and see which of the adjectives we used in the examples fall under which category. Once you realize that the adjectives from different categories do not require a comma between them, the matter will clarify itself to you. Only if you use the adjectives from the same category, you must use an interpunction.
There is also the Royal Order of Adverbs;
- Manner
- Place
- Frequency
- Time
- Purpose
The bunny is jumping vigorously (manner) over the fence (place) once annually (frequency) before noon (time) to escape the mad fox (purpose).
The use of interpunctions or conjunctions is mandatory if you use more than one adverb in a sentence (which is highly unadvisable).
The bunny is jumping vigorously and crazily…
The bunny is jumping vigorously, busily, and crazily…
Is the bunny jumping vigorously, busily, or crazily?
Again, quite a natural principle for the native speaker, but the authors can find themselves misusing or breaking those rules without achieving any literal benefit.
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