Example:
- He is a highly qualified, experienced doctor.
- He is an experienced, highly qualified doctor.
- He is a highly qualified and experienced doctor.
(Both make sense, which means both adjectives are of equal importance (coordinate) and a comma is used.)
Example:
Three or more coordinate adjectives
When there are three or more coordinate adjectives, separate the adjectives with commas and the last two adjectives with the word and.
- She bought him a yellow, brown and red cap.
- There were round, square and oval birthday cakes on sale at the bakery.
No commas are required to separate non-coordinate adjectives that belong to different categories of adjectives. The adjectives are shown in bold.
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This beautiful large 10-year-old red-coloured Russian-designed wooden summer house is for sale.
(Summer is a noun acting as an adjective modifying the noun house.)
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She inherited that light yellowish-brown wicker cat basket from her grandmother, who used to keep a playful small black cat.
(Wicker and cat are nouns acting as modifying adjectives.)
Example:
Coordinate and non-coordinate adjectives
Coordinate and non-coordinate adjectives may exist in a single sentence.
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The items he bought included a reasonably-priced, imported glass wine jug.
(Reasonably-priced and imported are coordinate adjectives as they can exchange places, and the word and can replace the comma. The other two adjectives glass and wine are non-coordinate because and cannot be placed between them or between imported and glass.)
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The funny, clumsy clown soon appeared, dressed in clothes with red and yellow polka dots
Examples:
If adjectives in a sentence come after the verb be (is, are, etc.), the qualifier adjective (an adjective that qualifies the meaning of a noun and is accepted as part of the noun) will accompany the noun at the beginning of the sentence. The qualifier adjective does not need to be an adjective: summer, for example, in the following example sentences. More examples: garden gate, sandwich box, kitchen table, fish farm (all the words in bold are not adjectives; they are nouns but act as adjectives).
- Correct: This summer house is beautiful, small, 10-year-old, red-coloured, Russian designed and wooden.
- Incorrect: This house is beautiful, small, 10-year-old, red-coloured, Russian designed and wooden and summer.