Adjectives: A little dab'll do ya

Mark Twain said, "If you catch an adjective, kill it." That's both sound and memorable advice. The idea being that overuse of adjectives (words that describe nouns) can clutter writing and rob it of its vigor. Strong, colorful verbs should be your primary workers in a sentence. But that doesn't mean that adjectives aren't useful – even in business writing -- and it's wise to have a sizable and varied collection of them, as well as a sharp feel for how and when to use them.

Treat adjectives the way a cook treats a powerful spice, sparingly.There's also a fundamental rule to remember when you shove more than one adjective in front of a noun. Like two feuding kids, adjectives must sometimes be separated. A comma is the proper tool for the job, but before slapping one in between two adjectives, you need to determine first if the comma is necessary by asking two questions, both of which are intended to determine if the adjectives are equal in rank.

First question: If and is inserted between the two adjectives, will the sentence still make sense?: "He is a congenial and dapper gentlemen." In this instance, and works, so you would use a comma to separate the adjectives, "...a congenial, dapper gentlemen."

Second question: Can the two adjectives be used interchangeably? In the above example, yes. You could write "...a dapper, congenial gentlemen" and the sentence would still read correctly.

Now let's look at an example in which the two questions reveal that you have adjectives that are unequal in rank and must not be separated by a comma: "The old stone house no longer stands." If you insert and between old and stone, the sentence reads awkwardly. Likewise, should you swap the positions of stone and old, the sentence appears nonsensical. That's because stone is an integral part of the phrase "stone house." It doesn't have equal footing with old as a modifier of the house. You could say "decrepit stone house," "rambling stone house," or plug in any number of other adjectives, but stone and house stay together as a unit, also known as a noun phrase, and no comma separates stone from the adjective that appears before it.

I'll close with a couple of other examples that illustrate both equal and unequal adjectives: "The tattered blue suit," "He rode a new, 10-speed blue bicycle."