About Grammar Simplified
One kind of question: what is the right word here, and why that one?
Everything on this site exists to answer it faster than a dictionary can and more precisely than a thesaurus will. Free to read, checked against published authorities, and honest about how it is made.
1,477
guides published
15
subject topics
70
in-depth usage guides
2,000+
words in a typical guide
Free
no account, no paywall
Two libraries, two different questions
One half hands you the words. The other explains how they behave once you have them.
1,119 word lists
Adjectives by Subject
Describing words organised by what you are writing about — food, travel, personality, work, and eleven more topics. Grouped by shade of meaning rather than dumped alphabetically, because content, satisfied and complacent are not interchangeable and a flat list pretends they are.
Browse the lists →358 guides
Writing with Adjectives
How the words behave in a sentence: the order they fall into, when they compare and when they cannot, where they carry opinion instead of fact, and how to reach for a vivid word without overreaching.
Browse the guides →The position behind all of it
Most writing advice about adjectives is some version of use fewer of them. It is not bad advice, but it is incomplete, and repeated often enough it produces prose that is merely thin rather than precise.
The position taken here is different. The problem is rarely the number of adjectives — it is that the wrong one was reached for. Very big is weak not because it has two words but because neither of them is doing much work. Cavernous is one word and says more.
Cutting adjectives makes bad sentences shorter. Choosing better ones makes them better. That is why the lists are grouped by meaning, and why the guides spend as much time on what a word implies as on what it denotes.
Rule, convention, or someone’s preference
A great deal of what gets taught as grammar is style preference wearing a stern face. We separate them:
- A rule — break it and the sentence is ungrammatical to native speakers. Subject-verb agreement.
- A convention — settled practice that varies by style guide. The serial comma.
- A preference — one writer’s taste that hardened into folklore. The supposed ban on splitting an infinitive.
How a guide gets made
Stated plainly rather than buried, because readers are entitled to know how what they are reading was produced.
Drafted with AI assistance
Guides are drafted and edited with the help of AI writing tools. We say so openly.
Checked against authorities
Every rule stated is verified against a published reference before it goes up.
Examples read for fit
Each example is checked for whether it actually demonstrates the point it claims to.
Corrected when wrong
Reader corrections are acted on, and substantive changes are noted with a date.
What we check against
English has no governing body, so a grammar site has to say whose rules it is quoting. In order of precedence:
Merriam-Webster
American spelling, definitions and usage notes.
Chicago Manual of Style
Punctuation and formatting in general prose.
AP Stylebook
Conventions specific to news and web writing.
Cambridge & Oxford Learner’s
Questions concerning English as a second language.
Unless a guide says otherwise, it describes American English. Where British and American usage genuinely differ — the serial comma, quotation mark placement, toward against towards — the guide says so rather than quietly picking one and hoping you do not notice. Where a rule is genuinely disputed, we say it is disputed and explain both positions.
The full process is set out in our editorial policy.
Who writes it
Nathan Cole
Editor
Nathan writes the adjective guides and word lists on Grammar Simplified. Every guide carries his byline, the date it went up, and a note of the reference works it was checked against.
All guides by Nathan Cole →How it is paid for
The site is free to read and funded by advertising. There are no paid guest posts, no sponsored guides, and no reviews written in exchange for payment.
Advertisers have no input into what is published, no advance sight of guides, and no ability to have one changed or removed. Advertising is kept visually separate from the guide itself. What data our partners collect is set out in the privacy policy.
When we get it wrong
We publish a great deal, about a subject where people care about precision, so some of it will be wrong.
- Factual errors are corrected as soon as we can confirm them.
- A correction that changes the substance of a guide is noted at its foot, with the date.
- Typos and broken links are simply fixed.
Reader corrections are the cheapest quality control there is. Send one.