Adjectives are words or phrases that modify nouns and pronouns.
Adjectives add vividness to writing by describing, defining, or qualifying persons, places, or things. They add more to a story or article by providing descriptive information and details.
Get insight into how to include different types of adjectives in your writing.
Then, conveniently review grammar and spelling with the Originality.ai Grammar Checker.
Adjectives add context, detail, and definition.
Consider the difference between these two sentences:
Both sentences have a woman in a car with bricks. However, the adjectives in the second version paint an entirely different picture! They bring the story to life.
As illustrated in the example above, by modifying other words, adjectives add layers of meaning to the words they describe. They help to paint a story.
Descriptive adjectives, also called qualitative adjectives, are the type most people are familiar with, and for good reason—most adjectives fall into this category.
They describe the characteristics or attributes of a person, place, or thing.
In addition to physical appearance or personality attributes, qualitative adjectives can express other descriptive qualities, such as opinion, size, and age. They answer the question: “What kind?”
Examples:
Quantitative adjectives reveal how many or how much of something is being described.
Quantitative adjectives may be numbers or number-related words (both, more, dozen, whole, half, etc.). They answer the questions: “How many?” or “How much?”
Examples:
Possessive adjectives show ownership or association. They answer the question: “Whose?”
Examples:
When a proper noun is the root of an adjective or is being used as an adjective, it is capitalized.
A common instance of a proper adjective is when describing a country of origin or using a person’s name as part of a modifier.
Examples:
Sometimes, the job of an adjective is to describe the differences between two or more things.
Examples:
There are four demonstrative adjectives: two are singular (this, that), and two are plural (these, those).
These words are called demonstrative adjectives because they describe (demonstrate) whether something is near or far—in space or time.
There are just three interrogative adjectives: what, which, and whose. They are adjectives because they modify a noun by way of asking a question.
Each of the interrogative adjectives leads to a response with a demonstrative and/or possessive adjective.
Examples:
Most adjectives come before the nouns they modify.
But some adjectives come after the nouns, especially when a form of the verb ‘to be’ is involved.
Adjectives can also appear after the words they modify if sensory verbs (seem, taste, look, feel, etc.) are involved:
It may surprise you, but articles (a, an, and the) can also be adjectives.
They have a part in modifying persons, places, and things because they indicate whether something is general or specific.
‘A’ and ‘an’ indicate the generality and non-specificity of something or someone, while ‘the’ expresses the idea of something or someone specific.
Examples:
Once you start seeing how critical adjectives are to revealing details to a reader, it’s difficult to imagine writing without them. Incorporating adjectives is like painting a colorful, vibrant canvas that brings writing to life.
Check if your adjective use is correct with the Originality.ai Grammar Checker.
Then, try Originality.ai’s best-in-class suite of tools for your editorial toolkit including an AI detector, plagiarism checker, and readability checker.
Learn more about grammar in our top guides: