A participial adjective is a verb form doing an adjective’s job. A running tap, a broken promise, an exciting result, an exhausted team. They come in two shapes, and choosing the wrong one produces the single funniest error in English. -ing describes the cause, -ed describes the feeling -ing form -ed form The lecture was…

A quantitative adjective tells you how many or how much. Three attempts, enough time, several reasons, no excuse. Almost every difficulty with them comes from a single distinction: whether the noun can be counted. Countable and uncountable Countable nouns have a plural and can take a number – one chair, four chairs. Uncountable nouns do…

An interrogative adjective asks a question about the noun it sits in front of. There are three: which, what, and whose. Which platform leaves first? What colour did you choose? Whose coat is on the chair? Remove the noun and they stop being adjectives. Which leaves first? uses which as a pronoun, because it no…

A proper adjective is formed from a proper noun and keeps its capital letter. France gives French, Shakespeare gives Shakespearean, Victoria gives Victorian. They are the only adjectives in English that are capitalised, which makes them the one place where choosing an adjective changes your punctuation. Where they come from Source Proper noun Proper adjective…

A demonstrative adjective points at a noun and tells you which one is meant. English has exactly four: this, that, these, those. They are chosen on two axes at once – how near the thing is, and whether there is one of it or several. Near Far Singular this chair that chair Plural these chairs…

An adjective modifies a noun or pronoun. An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. That is the whole distinction, and almost every error in this area comes from applying it to the wrong word. She is a careful driver. – careful describes the driver, a noun, so it is an adjective. She…

A predicate adjective follows a linking verb and describes the subject of the sentence, not the verb. In the soup is cold, cold is a predicate adjective: it reaches back across is to describe the soup. The contrast is with the attributive position, where the adjective sits directly in front of its noun – the…

An adjective phrase is a group of words built around a head adjective, working together as a single adjective. In she was remarkably patient with the children, the whole underlined stretch is one adjective phrase, and patient is its head. The phrase is doing exactly what a lone adjective does – describing a noun or…

A possessive adjective tells you who something belongs to, and it always sits in front of a noun. English has seven: my, your, his, her, its, our, their. Person Singular Plural First my our Second your your Third his, her, its their They never change for the thing owned. My car, my cars, my enormous…

Finding adjectives is easy until the sentence stops cooperating. The tired dog slept gives its adjective up immediately. The dog looked tired after the running water woke it has three candidates and only two adjectives. Three tests will settle almost any case. Use them in order. Test 1: the very test Put very in front…