Adjectives

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Adjectives describe nouns (and pronouns).

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

This sentence has every letter in the alphabet, and three adjectives.

• Quick and brow describe the fox; fox is a noun.
• Lazy describes the dog; dog is a noun

The facts are: the fox jumps over the dog. Adding adjectives provides more description, more colour, but can be over done.

The general rule

The general rule is to avoid adjectives – unless they are essential … unless they provide information the reader need to know.

Often, an adjective with a noun can be better expressed using a stronger noun, and being more specific.

• big house = mansion
• narrow road = lane

We look at strong nouns later – when we want to consider replacing weak nouns.