I'm no fan of the excessive use of adjectives. \u00a0More to the point, I'm\u00a0no fan of the use of adjectives. \u00a0This unpreference has grown out of my reading of too many academic papers rendered\u00a0both prolix and otiose by strings of adjectives that obscure\u00a0meaning. \u00a0In other words, it\u00a0has grown out of my reading of too many papers using\u00a0strings of adjectives that obscure meaning. \u00a0It's a commonplace to discover just how much adjectives get in the way, and how you can do without them. \u00a0Take this passage of gospel poetry and count the\u00a0adjectives in it:<\/p>\n
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. \u00a0The same was in the beginning with God. \u00a0All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. \u00a0In him was life; and the life was the light of men. \u00a0And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. \u00a0There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. \u00a0The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. \u00a0He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. \u00a0That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. \u00a0He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. \u00a0He came unto his own, and his own received him not. \u00a0But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. \u00a0And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That said, when adjectives are used, it's important to put them in a particular\u00a0order, otherwise it sounds odd. \u00a0Take this sentence:<\/p>\n
On holiday I bought a xxxx bowl \u00a0<\/em>\u2013 where the xxxx is a string of adjectives :<\/p>\n
old \u00a0 blue \u00a0 glass \u00a0 beautiful \u00a0 \u00a0 rectangular \u00a0 fruit \u00a0 French\u00a0 \u00a0 huge<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The question is: what order do you put these words in?<\/p>\n
..........................................<\/p>\n
So, what's the sentence?<\/p>\n
On holiday I bought an\u00a0old \u00a0blue glass beautiful rectangular fruit French huge bowl.<\/p>\n
Hardly. \u00a0How about:<\/p>\n
On holiday I bought a\u00a0beautiful old huge\u00a0rectangular\u00a0French blue glass fruit bowl.<\/p>\n
Sounds reasonable, but this sounds even better:<\/p>\n
On holiday I\u00a0bought a beautiful huge old rectangular blue French glass fruit bowl.<\/p>\n
The sounds good\u00a0because it conforms to the rule, which we all know, but have never learned:<\/p>\n
STEM: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose : NOUN<\/p>\n
So, the next time you're composing one of your tediously long strings of adjectives, bear this in mind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I'm no fan of the excessive use of adjectives. \u00a0More to the point, I'm\u00a0no fan of the use of adjectives. \u00a0This unpreference has grown out of my reading of too many academic papers rendered\u00a0both prolix and otiose by strings of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}