Nouns and Noun Phrases

58e Arrange modifiers appropriately.

Modifiers are words that give more information about a noun; that is, they modify the meaning of the noun in some way. Some modifiers precede the noun, and others follow it, as indicated in the chart above.

If there are two or more adjectives, their order is variable, but English has strong preferences, described below.

Subjective adjectives (those that show the writer’s opinion) go before objective adjectives (those that merely describe): these beautiful old-fashioned kitchen tiles.
Adjectives of size generally come early: these beautiful large old-fashioned kitchen tiles.
Adjectives of color generally come late: these beautiful large old-fashioned blue kitchen tiles.
Adjectives derived from proper nouns or from nouns that refer to materials generally come after color terms and right before noun modifiers: these beautiful large old-fashioned blue Portuguese ceramic kitchen tiles.
All other objective adjectives go in the middle, and adjectives for which no order is preferred are separated by commas: these beautiful large decorative, heat-resistant, old-fashioned blue Portuguese ceramic kitchen tiles.

Of course, the very long noun phrases presented above would be out of place in most kinds of writing. Academic and professional writing tend to avoid long strings of adjectives.

Modifier Type	Arrangement	Example
determiners	at the beginning of the noun phrase	these old-fashioned tiles
all or both	before any other determiners	all these tiles
numbers	after any other determiners	these six tiles
noun modifiers	directly before the noun	these kitchen tiles
adjectives	between determiners and noun modifiers	these old-fashioned kitchen tiles
phrases or clauses	after the noun	the tiles on the wallthe tiles that we bought