5/27/2023 0 Comments What is a coordinate adjectiveI’m sure you remember the tall, dark, and handsome man we mentioned at the beginning of the show. To determine if we need a comma between two adjectives that precede a noun, we need to return to the “and” test. You don’t have to remember the names unless you want to impress your friends. OK, I can tell-even from far away-that your head is spinning because of this esoteric terminology, when all you really want to know is what do commas have to do with these adjectives? Agreed. As for cumulative adjectives, neither trick works. Here’s a quick review so far: You can rearrange coordinate adjectives, and you can stick an “and” between them. For example, “It’s a bulky and heavy box” makes good sense but “It’s an exquisite and custom houseboat” does not. If the phrase makes sense, the adjectives are coordinate if not, they’re cumulative. You can perform a simple test: Add the word “and” between the adjectives. Let’s say you have two adjectives in a row before a noun and you’re not sure whether they’re coordinate or cumulative. The phrase “custom exquisite houseboat” is awkward, and it’s awkward precisely because you can’t rearrange cumulative adjectives. If you try to rearrange the adjectives as we did for “heavy, bulky box,” you’ll run into a problem. An example will make this more clear: In the phrase “exquisite custom houseboat,” “custom” modifies “houseboat”-they become a unit-and then “exquisite” modifies “custom houseboat.” Instead, the adjective right before the noun pairs with the noun as a unit, and then adjective before that unit modifies that. Cumulative adjectives, on the other hand, don’t separately modify the noun that follows even though they are all stacked up before the noun too (2).
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