ORDER OF ADJECTIVES by OGOCHUKWU OMENKUKWU

Let's say you want to buy a new car. You could not go to the car dealer and say, "I have been dreaming about having a car for a long time. I know exactly what I want. Please give it to me."
Of course he would think you are a bit crazy, but he would also ask you a very important question: "What does your dream car look like?" You would need to describe it to the car dealer, or you simply wouldn't get the car you had been dreaming about. You would most likely get the automobile the dealer couldn't sell. That wouldn't be a dream car; it would be a nightmare!
Fortunately, you could use words to describe the car of your dreams. The words that describe things are called adjectives. Adjectives describe nouns (nouns are people, places, and things). Adjectives are a terrific way to make your writing a lot more interesting, too. Take a look at the following sentence:
I want to buy a car.
Is this an interesting sentence? Does it describe the kind of car you want to buy? The answers are NO and NO! The listener/reader doesn't know what kind of car you want. Do you want a big car or little car? Fast or slow? Red or blue? Old or new? It is quite unclear. It is also poor writing because it is very boring. Would you buy a book that was written like this? Probably not. Unfortunately, many students and writers write like this. It is a very common problem which is quite easy to fix.
So what kind of car do you want? Well, um, . . .
• I want a blue car
• I want to buy a new car
• I want to buy a European car
• I want to buy a beautiful car
Did you find the adjectives? They are the words that describe the car. The adjectives above are blue, new, European, and beautiful. The above 4 sentences are written as if the writer wants 4 different cars. However, if the writer just wants 1 car, how would he/she combine the sentences into 1 sentence? The writer needs to put all of the adjectives together. Therefore, we get:
I want to buy a blue, new, European beautiful car.
How's that? Are there any problems? YES, there are problems! The ORDER of adjectives is quite important in English. Adjectives cannot be written in any order. There are rules, so you should use the following order:
1. DETERMINER OR ARTICLE:
 Determiners e.g. this, that, these, those, my, mine, your, yours, him, his, her, hers, they, their, Sam's etc
 Articles - a, an, the

2. OPINION ADJECTIVE: e.g. polite, fun, cute, difficult, hard-working

3. SIZE, INCLUDING ADJECTIVES, COMPARATIVES AND SUPERLATIVES
o height; e.g. tall, short, high, low; taller, tallest
o width; e.g. wide, narrow, thin, slim; wider, widest
o length; e.g. long, short; longer, longest
o volume; e.g. fat, huge; fatter, fattest

4. SHAPE: e.g. circular, oval, triangular, square, 5-sided, hexagonal, irregular

5. AGE: e.g. new, young, adolescent, teenage, middle-aged, old, ancient

6. COLOUR: e.g. red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, grey, black, black and white, light blue, dark red, pale blue, reddish brown, off-white, bright green, warm yellow

7. NATIONALITY: e.g. Hong Kong, Chinese, English, American, Canadian, Japanese

8. RELIGION: e.g. Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Moslem, pagan, atheist

9. MATERIAL: e.g. wood, plastic, metal, ceramic, paper, silk

10. NOUN USED AS AN ADJECTIVE: e.g. campus (as in 'campus activities')

11. THE NOUN THAT THE ADJECTIVES ARE DESCRIBING.

Using the above list, we can put all four adjectives together to get the following sentence:
• I want to buy a beautiful, new, blue European car.
Adding adjectives is very important if you want to make your writing more interesting. It helps the reader/listener form a picture in his/her mind.