In English, we place adjectives before the noun they modify:
a brown dish
a small brown dish
When a stack of adjectives includes one that could modify the adjective after it OR the final noun, the result has more than one meaning (that is,
it is ambiguous):
a small brown dog’s dish
Is the dog brown? Is the
dish brown? Which of them is small?
Would punctuation disambiguate? A comma only belongs between adjectives if you could sensibly
put “and” there. You would never say “a
brown and dog’s dish.” So you would not write “a brown, dog’s dish.” Could you disambiguate via a hyphen? A small brown-dog's dish? A small-brown-dog's dish? Weird. Personally, I would write "a dish for the small brown dog."
Dogs may not concern you. But below is an example where such stacked adjectives plus an unfortunate comma created
ambiguity:
England’s National Health
Service could save money by carrying out fewer, less effective procedures.
It seems that the writer is recommending “fewer and
less-effective procedures.” We hope not. But would "fewer less effective procedures" be any better? No, we need a hyphen. Do you know where?
Length of phrase does
not signal ambiguity. The stacked adjectives
in “bright chrome car-door handle” create a phrase that is long but readable. Yet the shorter
stack, “old men’s bike,” is short but ambiguous.
You can rewrite most stacked-adjective phrases to clarify their
intended meaning.
For example, mouse embryonic stem cell lines = lines
of stem cells from mouse embryos.
Below are ambiguous phrases with stacked adjectives. How would you disambiguate each?
- Pending home sales index
- US politician killer
- Free market research reports
- Adjustable wooden dog feeder
- Florida exotic pest plant council
- Two beige upholstered plastic kitchen chairs
- Roth IRA conversion eligibility
- Police academy trained fighter
- Hardy medium sized thick haired horned black cattle
- Excessive genomic DNA copy number variation
There are web pages about English adjectives and their order and punctuation. I reviewed many of them, and found them confusing or flawed. Most ignore punctuation rules. But below are two sites that, if you take them together, cover the rules fairly well. Warning: the second has an obnoxious audio ad.
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-order_1.htm
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/commas-with-adjectives
