Adjective Placement and Order

Based on where the adjective appears in a noun phrase, i.e. before or after the noun or pronoun they are modifying, we can categorize them into two main groups:

Attributive adjectives provide descriptive information about a certain characteristic of the person, place, or object, such as its appearance, color, shape, size, age, origin, and more.

A predicative adjective (also called predicate adjective) follows a linking verb. They can take an adjective complement after them or appear alone. For example:

When you want to assign a specific quality or description to a noun, you use an adjective. So what if you want to assign more than one quality to a noun?
There is actually a specific order in which you can order the adjectives.
It's interesting to know that many native English speakers are not consciously aware of this rule. They just use it naturally.
After this lesson, you can use this rule like a native speaker.

The order of adjectives is important when there is no comma or 'and' between them. If we put commas or 'and' between adjectives, the order is no longer necessary. However, when we want to describe something or someone with more than one adjective, we have to pay attention to the order.

Now, imagine you have a car. And you want to describe it with more than one adjective. For example, you want to say it's red and Italian.
Do we say 'Red Italian car' or 'Italian red car?'

The general rule of adjectives before a noun is as follows:

Now let's look at an example. Note that it is not very common to use so many adjectives before a noun. This is just an example for you to see how this rule works:

Adjectives are used to describe nouns. So, there is not always only one adjective. Sometimes more than one is used. In this case, we need to know their correct orders.