comma with adjective: She is wearing a short tight dress.

R

Rabelaisian

Senior Member
Toronto, Canada
English - Canadian
Hello. Does this make sense? I feel a comma belongs in statements like, "She had long, curly hair" and "She held a long, straight dagger in her hands" (given that in both examples the adjectives are equals in the conventional category of length and shape), but I don't feel a comma is needed in "She is wearing a short tight dress," because to me "tight dress" seems like the head noun in that one.

Is that consistent, though, or is it that the commas are superfluous in the first two examples?

Thanks.
 
    • Probably not because I don't see all of them as separate adjectives. I see straight blonde as a single adjective—it receives stress on its first element with the second element being understressed relative to the other adjectives and compared to what it would be stressed were it an independent adjective. So I would probably just put a comma after long.

    A style guide may disagree with me, and were I writing something for a meaningful audience, I might have to follow with different standards.

    JE
     
    How can "straight blonde" be a single adjective? I know "light blonde" or "medium blonde" would be, but its "straightness" and colour are two completely different categories of description.
     
    I'm coming in very late here, but I've just come across this section of the forum.
    I've developed a criterion which seems to work. To understand whether adjectives are equivalents in a list I try putting them after the noun.

    I'd write "she's wearing a short, tight dress" because we can say "her dress is short and tight".
    I would not put a comma in "she's wearing a short Italian dress" because "short" and "Italian" are not equivalent qualities; we might say "her short dress is Italian" or "her Italian dress is short", but we are unlikely to say "her dress is short and Italian".

    I don't see how "straight blonde" can be a single adjective. "Medium blonde", yes, because "medium" qualifies "blonde", not "hair". "Straight" on the other hand applies to the hair, not the colour.
     
    Einstein said:
    I've developed a criterion which seems to work. To understand whether adjectives are equivalents in a list I try putting them after the noun.
    ... we are unlikely to say "her dress is short and Italian".
    Click to expand...
    Yes. 'Short and Italian' is incongruous because the words belong to different categories.
     
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