OWL at Purdue Logo

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/). When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice at bottom.

Issue For November 10, 2004

Writing Question of the Week

I would like advice on the use of commas in the following sentences. Each sentence has multiple adjectives, and I'm wondering if they need commas.

1) The kitchen has a new tiled floor.

2) She has a new short haircut.

Thank you,
Linda

Dear Linda, For adjectives to be coordinate, they have to be in the same "category" of adjectives. One way to test for this is to switch the order of the adjectives or put an "and" in between the adjectives. If the sentence still makes sense, that's a good indication that you should use a comma. If not, the adjectives are probably not coordinate. For your examples, I wouldn't use a comma since these adjectives describe different properties and are therefore in different categories. (anonymous OWL tutor)

The OWL Help Nest

Each week we'll publish a request for advice or information. If you wish to contribute a response to the topic, please write to us at owln-@owl.english.purdue.edu. Please let us know if you want us to include your name and/or your email address when we publish your response. The following week, we'll publish the best information and advice that we receive in the newsletter. If you have a question for our readers, please send it to us at owln-@owl.english.purdue.edu.

This Week's Questions and Answers

Question #1 I am an English teacher in Greece and I am teaching landscape architecture terminology to students. I have found a lot of information, articles, books, and internet sites, but I would like to start creating a dictionary with English terms that will be translated to Greek. Are there any sources or sites of advising you on how you can start forming a dictionary? Or are there any dictionaries or sites with this terminology? I would appreciate any help.--Theothosia Albanti

Answer: John Fleming, Hugh Honour, and Nikolaus Pevsner published the fifth edition of _The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture_ in 2000. It's available from most online booksellers. A quick search resulted in very few sites devoted to the terminology of landscape architecture. As to how to go about forming a dictionary, you might try searching the International Journal of Lexicography's articles for some help, or at least to get the names of people who specialize in this practice. It's available at the following URL: http://ijl.oupjournals.org/

Question #2 I'm looking for books and multi-media resources suitable for teaching Language Arts for High School and Language for an International Baccalaureate Diploma program. Please recommend or help me get in touch with any bookshop/book companies that carry such books (in English, Please).

Answer: There are far, far too many book companies that publish language textbooks for me to even narrow them down for you. Happily there is an excellent web resource you can turn to. Browse to the following URL for a list of ESL publishers: http://www.cal.org/ncle/publishers.htm

What's Happening on OWL

What's Happening in the Writing Lab

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading our newsletter. You can email us at any time at owln-@owl.english.purdue.edu. You can also email the OWL coordinator, Chris Berry, at coordi-@owl.english.purdue.edu and the webmaster, Karl Stolley, at webma-@owl.english.purdue.edu. (Chris and Karl take turns writing the newsletter.)

This issue you have attempted to reach could not be found. Please use the navigation to the left to locate the issue you are attempting to open. Thank you!

Copyright ©1995-2013 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.