Adjectives

Learn about adjectives, what they are, why they are important in our writing, and how to identify them.

What are adjectives?

Adjectives are the words we use to add attributes to nouns or noun phrases in order to describe or modify them. They can describe the quality of a nounFor example, good dog., or the quantityFor example, many dogs.. Therefore, descriptive words like colors, size, textures, and tones are adjectives, such as big, soft, blue, funny, etc. Numbers or numerical descriptors are also adjectives, such as many, few, twelve, infinite, etc.

Why use adjectives?

Adjectives are important in writing because they essentially make nouns more specific. For example, if you write “flower,” the reader may imagine something completely different than what you had in mind.

However, if you write “small, blue, three-petaled flower,” the reader ...