Put It in the Right Order: How Sequence Shapes Clarity
April 23, 2026
After publishing the February issue of The Clarity Chronicles, I heard from my friend and fellow communications professional Chris Davies.
Chris asked: “Have you done a newsletter on the order of adjectives? Most native English speakers do it naturally, but I don’t think it was ever taught to me in school. Fascinating!”
I met Chris in 2015 when we were both at a career crossroads—we were both in the process of shifting from steady, full-time employment to setting up our own communications consultancies.
We started out sharing ideas about our respective businesses but quickly became friends. Over the years, Chris and I have kept in touch, meeting regularly for coffee, drinks, dinner. We’ve even tried to find ways to work together, joking that a partnership of some sort seems natural. We could be the “CD Show” or “CD Squared”—or “CD2”, if that’s the way you roll.
But I digress…
Back to Chris’s question, which is an excellent one.
Is there a rule governing the order in which to place adjectives describing a noun? What about items in a horizontal (as opposed to a vertical, bulleted) list? Or order within a sentence?
The short answer: Yes, yes, and yes.
1. Adjective order: OSASCOMP
Chris was right when she noted that we native English speakers seem to intuitively know how to order adjectives correctly. Most of us would agree that “the tall, young man” just sounds better than “the young, tall man,” even if we haven’t got the foggiest idea why.
Well, believe it or not, there is a rule! Or at least, as Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty calls it, a “quasi-official proper order.”
The rule comes from Mark Forsyth’s 2013 book The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase. According to Forsyth, “opinion” adjectives should come first, “purpose” adjectives last, and other types of adjectives in between.
Grammar Girl points out that the first letters of each type of adjective spell “OSACOMP.” While not exactly roll-off-the-tongue memorable, it’s better than nothing, so here, for your benefit, is the OSACOMP order:
Opinion: stylish, beautiful, intriguing
Size: big, small
Age: old, young
Shape: round, triangular
Colour: green, black
Origin: Canadian, Finnish
Material: wood, concrete
Purpose: pool (as in pool table), dining (as in dining room)
Of course that’s not the end of it.
As in most things in life, there are exceptions. Like "big, bad wolf."
According to the OSACOMP hierarchy, “bad” should come first because it’s opinion, followed by “big” because it denotes size. But “bad, big wolf” sounds quite wrong, doesn’t it?
Luckily Mark Forsyth comes to our rescue once again. In a piece written for the BBC in September 2016, Forsyth explains that “big, bad wolf” is “obeying another great linguistic law that every native English speaker knows, but doesn’t know they know.”
That linguistic law is the rule of “ablaut reduplication.” (What a mouthful. No wonder we’ve never heard of this.) It’s the rule that has us saying “clip-clop”, “tick-tock” and “ding dang dong,” rather than “clop-clip”, “tock-tick” or “dong dang ding.”
“Reduplication”, Forysth tells us, is repeating a word, “sometimes with an altered consonant (lovey-dovey, fuddy-duddy, nitty-gritty), and sometimes with an altered vowel: bish-bash-bosh, ding-dang-dong.”
According to Forsyth, if three words repeat a vowel, then the order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words, the first is I and the second is either A or O.
I was intrigued to learn about “ablaut reduplication,” but if I were you, I wouldn’t waste any time committing this rule to memory. I believe—as US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said about pornography—you’ll know it when you see it.
2. Order in lists: The rule of end weight
In Bruce Ross-Larson’s excellent little book, Edit Yourself: A manual for everyone who works with words (which, by the way, Chris Davies recommended to me), the author tells us: “The elements of pairs, series, and compound subjects and predicates usually appear as they come out of the writer’s mind—haphazardly.”
To make those elements easier for the reader to understand, Ross-Larson advises, writers should rearrange those elements “from short to long and from simple to compound.”
What Ross-Larson is describing is the rule of “end weight.”
According to this rule of English syntax, “heavier”—that is, longer or more complex—elements should be placed at the end of a phrase or sentence, while lighter, shorter, simpler elements should go first. A single noun before a compound one, a simple idea before a complex one.
For example, if you wanted to describe your general affinity for fruit, you might say, “I like apples, bananas, and berries of all types.”
“Apples” and “bananas” are simple nouns. They should come first in this list. As a phrase, “berries of all types” is a more complex noun and is, therefore, “heavier.” According to the rule of end weight, “berries of all types” should be placed at the end.
It would not be grammatically wrong to list “berries of all types” first, but neither would it be good.
First of all, it’s easier for a reader to approach and parse a sentence that starts with simple or common information. Having processed that initial information, it’s almost as if readers have subconsciously built the necessary confidence to tackle the longer, more complex ideas that follow.
Secondly, placing the berries phrase at the end provides better balance and flow; the sentence is less clunky.
Finally, placing shorter items first can help with momentum: as the sentence builds, the reader is carried forward along with it.
Full disclosure: Like OSACOMP, I don’t recall ever having been taught end weight. It’s another one of those rules of English that I always seemed to know, follow intuitively, and advise others to employ to make their writing more readable. Before I researched it for this newsletter, I didn’t even know there was a name for this rule. But now that I do, I love it even more!
3. Ordering a sentence: Subject-verb-object
Forget intriguing introductory clauses, fancy qualifying sub-clauses, and tacked-on end clauses that hint at what’s to come.
There’s an easier way to write a sentence. Start with a subject, follow with a verb, and end with an object.
As a reminder:
- The subject is the person, place, thing or idea that the sentence is about.
- The verb is the action or state of being in the sentence. It tells us what the subject is doing or what is happening to the subject.
- The object, if the sentence requires one, is the thing being acted on.
The "subject-verb-object" structure is the simplest and most common way to write a sentence. Because it’s so common, readers will recognize the pattern and more quickly understand your meaning.
That's not to say that every single sentence you write must follow this pattern. God no! Variety is the spice of life, after all.
But I always feel it’s best to warm your readers up by leading with the simple. Once your reader is hooked, there’s usually time and space enough to tart things up or dazzle your reader with subsequent sentences.
So there you have it, Chris. The rules for adjective order with two bonus lessons thrown in for good measure!
Remember this: Order matters. To create better flow, balance, and readability, pay attention to order of adjectives, items in a list, and even the various parts of a sentence.
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