Your Order of Words Affects Your Credibility as a Writer

The order in which you place adjectives in a sentence will impact on your credibility as a writer. Keep this diagram with you to get it right. Own artwork.

So many times I read something, and there is something about the writing that tells me that the person is not a writer. That’s because writers really do have a way with words. It took me years to establish that part of it was rhythm, and then another few years to establish that it was the incorrect order of words.

Did you know, for instance, that adjectives in English follow a very precise order, and that if you put them in the wrong order, you lose your reader because something jars?

The order is:

1. opinion
2. size
3. age
4. shape
5. color
6. origin
7. material
8. purpose
9. and lastly the noun.

To quote something I read years ago on the web, and I’ve long forgotten the source, it’s a ‘lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.’

So here’s what happens with some who attempt to write. They assume that if they use a bunch of adjectives that they will make their writing sound important, and then they use the adjectives in the wrong word order. They are undone!