The use of commas and 'and' to separate adjectives

21.1 Separating adjectives used attributively[> 6.7]

When we have two or more adjectives in front of a noun we only need commas to separate those which are equally important (i.e. where the order of the first two could easily be reversed):

a beautiful, bright clean room That is, we put a comma after the qualityadjective. We never use a comma after the adjective that comes immediately before the noun: The hotel porter led me to a beautiful,bright clean room Joy is engaged to a daring,very attractive young Air Force pilot

Adjectives

In journalism, writers frequently try to give condensed descriptions by

stringing adjectives together, as in: e.g.

Ageing recently-widowed popular dramatist Milton Fairbanks

announced recently that 'Athletes was to be his last play

Some fixed pairs of adjectives are often linked by and: old and musty

wine- a long and winding road, hard and fast rules. Pairs of colour

adjectives are often hyphenated: a blue-and-white flag.

6.21.2 Separating adjectives used predicatively[> 6.7]

If there are two adjectives, we separate them with and:

My shoes are old and worn If there are more than two adjectives, we may separate them by commas, except for the last two which are separated by and:

My shoes are dirty, wet old and worn We do not usually put a comma after the adjective in front of and [compare > 1.20].

The comparison of adjectives

Shorter adjectives: form of regular comparison

Only gradable[> 6.5] adjectives compare. Most common adjectives are short words (usually of one syllable and not more than two syllables). They form their comparatives and superlatives as shown.

 

	adjective clean		comparative cleaner	superlative cleanest
2 3	big nice			bigger nicer	biggest nicest
	tidy			tidier	tidiest
	narrow	[>	6.26n 1	]narrower	narrowest

Notes on the comparison of shorter adjectives