The Rules Of Adjective Word Order

Mark Forsyth's The Elements of Eloquence lays out the rules of adjective order that fluent English speakers follow without quite knowing why. You can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac. It's an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.

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