Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Feel free to post things about the oddities of the English language. We're here to help writers hone their language skills.

Questions are more than welcome and anyone can answer.

I was watching the news this morning and one of the "color" stories was about the use of adjectives. It seems that there are some "unwritten" rules about the order in which adjectives are used.

For instance, you wouldn't write "a green great dragon". Instead you'd write "a great green dragon".

Now, if you've grown up speaking English, you probably understand these "rules" without knowing you do. But sometimes even English speakers mess up and often people who speak English as a second language stumble over these unwritten rules.

Well, the reporter showed a list of "the rules", but I couldn't write them down fast enough, so I found them on the Internet. Here they are:
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In her 2006 paper on “Adjective Ordering Restrictions Revisited” on pp 309–407 of the Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Alexandra Teodorescu writes:

Adjective ordering restrictions (AOR) have been widely discussed, but they are still not very well understood. For example, in languages like English prenominal adjectives are strictly ordered.
…
For example, adjectives that denote quality have been argued to precede adjectives conveying size, which in turn precede adjectives conveying shape, and so on, in all languages (5). Similar claims have been made for other adjective types, and the respective ordering restrictions are given in (6).

(5) Quality > Size > Shape > Color > Provenance [Sproat and Shih (1991)]

(6) a. Possesive > Speaker-oriented > Subject-oriented >Manner/Thematic [Cinque (1994)]

b. Value > Dimension > Physical property > Speed > Human Propensity > Age > Color

Another one (that you taught me) is the "Cambridge Comma".

When making a list there are two ways to do it:

1. ... bread, butter, peanut butter and jelly.
2. ... bread, butter, peanut butter, and jelly.

In example 2, everything is sitting on the counter as separate items.
In example 1, the peanut butter and jelly are already combined.

Now, not everyone uses the Cambridge Comma, but I prefer it for clarity.

Now, the proper way to write #1 for Cambridge use is:
1. ... bread, butter, and peanut butter and jelly.

This is a small thing for our example, but for other lists, the difference in perception for the reader can be crucial to understanding.

I got to thinking about adjective lists. I've been sticking commas everywhere except for the last adjective before the noun. Welllllll, it seems that you don't always do that. Here's a lady who has the straight scoop for us:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educ...