What Two Guidelines Will Help You to Avoid Causing Confusion

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The Answer is To avoid causing confusion when using clusters of adjectives, you can follow these two guidelines:

1. **Order of Adjectives**: In English, when multiple adjectives are used to describe a noun, they are typically ordered according to a specific hierarchy. This hierarchy is often remembered by the acronym "OSASCOMP," which stands for Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, and Purpose. Adjectives should be placed in a sentence in this order. For example, you would say "a beautiful small old round red Italian leather handbag" rather than mixing up the order of these descriptive words. By following this conventional sequence, you ensure that the description is clear and sounds natural to native speakers.

2. **Use of Commas and 'and'**: When you have two or more adjectives that are of the same category or are equally important in describing the noun, you should separate them with commas or use 'and'. However, if the adjectives are of different categories (as per the OSASCOMP rule), you typically do not need to separate them with commas. For example, "She wore a bright, colorful scarf" uses a comma because "bright" and "colorful" are both opinion adjectives. In contrast, "She wore a bright yellow scarf" does not use a comma because "bright" is an opinion adjective and "yellow" is a color adjective.

By following these two guidelines, you can use clusters of adjectives effectively without causing confusion for the reader or listener.

What Two Guidelines Will Help You to Avoid Causing Confusion

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