Cumulative Adjectives

Using Multiple Adjectives

'Mom made a yummy, homemade apple pie for dessert.' In this sentence, the author used three different adjectives (yummy, homemade, apple) to describe the pie. Did you notice that there is a comma separating 'yummy' from 'homemade,' but not one separating 'homemade' from 'apple? When a writer uses more than one adjective to describe a noun, the adjectives are either cumulative or coordinate, and the way that commas are used depends on the type of adjectives they are.

Cumulative Adjective Rules

When two or more adjectives are used to modify the same noun and when those adjectives must come in a particular order for the sentence to make sense, you have cumulative adjectives.

Order

Cumulative adjectives are arranged in the following order:

The big blue football jersey fit the boy just right.

So, you cannot reverse the order of cumulative adjectives. For example:

An unmarked police car patrolled the area.

Both 'unmarked' and 'police' are modifying the noun 'car.' We can determine if these adjectives are cumulative by trying to reverse their order:

A police unmarked car patrolled the area.

When we do this, we see that it would not make sense.

Let's look at another example:

Zach rode the wooden roller coaster six times.

In this example, 'wooden' and 'roller' may not be reversed. It does not make sense to say '…the roller wooden coaster…,' therefore, these are cumulative adjectives.

Punctuation

When separating cumulative adjectives, do not use commas. Generally, commas would take the place of the word 'and' when separating more than one adjectives. Separating cumulative adjectives with the word 'and' makes no sense. Look what would happen to our examples if we put 'and' between the adjectives.

• An unmarked and police car patrolled the area.
• Zach rode the wooden and roller coaster six times.

With the 'and,' these sentences do not make sense, do they? When writing cumulative adjectives, leave out the commas.

The Difference Between Cumulative and Coordinate Adjectives

Like cumulative adjectives, coordinate adjectives are also two or more adjectives that describe the same noun. However, the order of coordinate adjectives makes no difference and they do require commas between them or would make sense with the word 'and' separating them.

For example:

The black, shiny vehicle slowly turned the corner.

This is a coordinate adjective because it would also make sense to reverse it or replace the comma with the word 'and'.

The shiny and black vehicle slowly turned the corner.

Three or More Adjectives

When there are more than two adjectives describing a noun, the coordinate adjectives will be separated by commas or the word 'and', but the cumulative adjectives will not. There is not a comma between a coordinate and a cumulative adjective.

For example:

The fluffy, white down pillow summoned me to sleep.

In this sentence, 'fluffy' and 'white' are coordinate adjectives that are separated by a comma, but 'down' is part of a cumulative adjective. The word 'down' doesn't make sense if it changes places with one of the other adjectives.

In contrast, look at this example:

The animated, furry, excited puppy licked the little boy's face.

In this example, there are commas between 'animated', 'furry', and 'excited' because they are coordinate adjectives that could be put in any order and still make sense. It is also an option to put the word 'and' in place of the last comma.