Describing People and Objects
Adjectives
Adjectives are placed directly before nouns to describe certain qualities.
That is an important paper outlining our production planning process.
These are our yellow envelopes for our advance shipment notifications.
Adjectives are also often used with the verb 'to be' to describe the character of people or things. In this case, place the adjective at the end of the sentence.
The production process is very confusing.
The production prices are somewhat fixed.
Adjective Order
It is possible to use a string of adjectives to describe a person, place or thing. When using more than one adjective, use the following pattern to place the adjectives in order before the noun.
Opinion, dimension, age, shape, color, origin, material + noun
NOTE: Use no more than three adjectives to describe a noun.
1. Opinion
Example:
The long assembly line produces widgets.
That is a weird production progress control method.
2. Dimension
Example:
3. Age
Example:
That is a new production time record.
It is an antiquated assembly process.
4. Shape
Example:
The auxillary materials describe how the oscillator produces a square wave.
The round pie chart depicts the production volume ratio.
5. Color
Example:
The green dots mark productivity indicators.
We file our backlog of orders in this red folder.
6. Origin
Example:
The company's Italian division has implemented new methods of progress control.
This American backorder will be filled when the first widget is in inventory.
7. Material
Example:
We printed the bar code directly on the cardboard package.
The plastic case of the bar code scanner was cracked.
Here are some examples of nouns modified with three adjectives in the correct order based on the list above.
Our old Canadian plastic purchase order sheets melted in the sun.
That original new Indian prototype was exciting.
The round red Italian ore is in our bulk inventory.
The foul old green batch is spoiled.