Adjectives of Quality: Definition, Guidelines and Examples

Adjectives are words often placed at the beginning of a noun to describe it or give more information about it.

One of the most effective ways of making your writing unique is using descriptive adjectives. Employing descriptive adjectives will make your writing much more interesting and vivid. Their use may make all the difference between a good and a great writing piece.

So, what are adjectives of quality? How do we use them appropriately in writing? This article will examine adjectives to describe quality and their usage.

What are Adjectives of Quality?

Adjectives of quality are also known as descriptive adjectives. In a phrase, descriptive adjectives are used to describe a noun’s qualities, such as its size, form, and color. Adjectives are added to the end of a noun to provide further detail.

Adjectives that provide dimension, size, or form to a person, place, or thing are called descriptive adjectives.

They are used to expand nouns in a phrase by elaborating on their attributes (such as color, size, or shape). Using quality adjectives, we can add flair to our writing by emphasizing a noun’s specific function or quality.

How to Use Descriptive Adjectives in Writing

Adjectives of description breathe life into a lifeless text. To minimize overuse, we work them into our writing so that they sound natural.

Adjectives are an excellent tool for helping authors add dimension, emotion, and style to their writing. They aid writers in providing readers with more information about nouns in the sentence.

For example:

• The girl sat in the back row.

This sentence doesn’t say much about the noun “girl” because it doesn’t have any adjectives to describe it.

• The fat girl sat in the back row.

This sentence is more precise than the first one because the word “fat” is being used to describe the noun “girl.”

Descriptive adjectives must be strategically placed within a phrase and utilized with the intended meaning. Combined with an adverb, adjective, or clause, they take on new meanings.

Using more than one descriptive adjective in a sentence to describe a noun adequately is possible. Below are some sentences that appropriately and incorrectly employ multiple describing adjectives.

• There’s an attractive yellow sunflower in the garden.
• There’s a yellow attractive sunflower in the garden.

(The first is better and more specific than the second.)

• The big black monkey is sitting on the highest branch.
• The black big monkey is sitting on the highest branch.

(The first is better and more specific than the second.)

Types of Descriptive Adjective

Because they are used to characterize nouns, descriptive adjectives are extremely significant. To better our everyday English communication and writing, we must be familiar with adjectives.

Using descriptive adjectives, we may make our sentence formulation highly clear and emotional. There are three sorts of descriptive adjectives, including the following:

1. Simple Descriptive Adjectives

Adjectives of this sort describe a noun’s characteristic or quality. In addition, it can also be used to convey concepts like smell, temperature, duration, emotion, tone, hue, form, and composition.

Adjectives can be as simple as:

• “Smart”
• “Lazy”
• “Calm”
• “Little”
• “Green”
• “Deep”
• “Large”
• “Tall”

2. Compound Descriptive Adjectives

Adjectives that consist of more than one word are called compound adjectives. If necessary, we will employ them when writing or speaking English.

Compound descriptive adjectives include terms like:

• “Short-tempered”
• “Self-centered”
• “Well-being”
• “Heavy-handed”
• “Sure-footed”
• “Broken-hearted”
• “Whole-hearted”

3. Proper Descriptive Adjectives

Adjectives that modify proper nouns must always begin with a capital letter. It is used to characterize nouns that pertain to geographical locations, nationalities, faiths, etc.

Adjectives that accurately characterize a culture, faith, or nationality include:

• Hindu
• Muslim
• English
• Buddhist
• Christian
• Turkish
• American
• African

7 Guidelines for Effective Use of Descriptive Adjectives

Here are some guidelines and pointers for effectively deploying descriptive adjectives:

We can describe a noun by using two or more descriptive adjectives in the proper order.

For example: “The small fluffy white birds sat on the wall.”

2. When using more than one adjective to describe something, the correct order is size, age, shape, color, nationality, and material.

For example: “The big, old, thin gray rabbit sat on the grassland.”

3. Before specific opinion adjectives, you use general opinion adjectives.

For example: “The beautiful, talented singer has won an award.”

4. A comma should separate them where two or more adjectives mean the same thing.

For example: “He was a smart, bright man.”

5. Don’t put a comma between adjectives that mean different things.

For example: “It was pretty cold.”

6. Some adjectives are made by putting a suffix on the end of a noun.

For example:

“Danger-dangerous,” “love-lovely,” “child-childlike,” “acid-acidic,” “sheep-sheepish,” “nation-national,” etc.

7. Most of the time, adjectives that describe the opinion come before adjectives that describe the color, shape, size, etc.

For example:

“The beautiful black portrait was kept in the museum” is better than “There was a black beautiful portrait in the museum.”

Wrapping Up

As you can see, descriptive adjectives are a critical aspect of writing that can add color and depth to your stories. They can help paint a picture of your work and the events you’re describing for your readers.

They are expressive, vivid, and enchanting. Instead of struggling with your wording, follow our seven guidelines. At the end of your writing, let your adjectives reign!