It may seem strange, but if you ask native speakers, they may tell you that they were never taught grammar in a formal sense. I certainly don’t remember being taught any formal rules at school. This may go some way to explaining why there are so many errors made in below the line comments and on social media, with a particular favourite being ‘would of’ instead of ‘would have’. Native speakers tend to trust their instinct and go with what sounds right in most situations. A striking example of this is with adjective order. For native speakers it simply sounds wrong when you say a ‘leather black coat’ instead of a ‘black leather coat’.

When you use more than one adjective to describe an object, they go in the following order:

Opinion adjectives, e.g. beautiful, interesting, crazy, always come before descriptive ones. It sounds wrong when someone says a French delicious wine when they should say a delicious French wine.

While it is unlikely that someone will use five or six adjectives before a noun, it is common to use two or three adjectives.

e.g. She has short dark hair. I bought a pair of beautiful Italian leather shoes.

In which column in the table below would you place the above adjectives?

How would you describe the following objects?