When adding commas between adjectives, I usually ask myself the following questions:
- Can I swap the adjectives and still get the same meaning?
- Can I add the word "and" between the two adjectives and does it make sense?
However, I've run across a situation I need some advice on. How do I deal with the following sentence?
The thought of a free-roaming ten-foot slithering snake was really creepy to me.
I've never had a sentence with multiple compound adjectives, and it's really throwing me off. Can someone please tell me if its ok to leave this sentence as it is, or do I need to add commas?
Best Answer
I fail to see why the situation with hyphenated compound adjectives is any different from that with simple adjectives. It is normal practice to put commas between multiple adjectives (with some variation in style regarding the last adjective if ‘and’ is included) — see e.g. Crystal. So a simplified model of your sentence would have commas as:
Whatever the virtues of your self-imposed rules, they work in the same way if you replace ‘wild’ by ‘free-roaming’, and ‘long’ by ‘ten-foot’.
As justification for this point of view, all I can find at the moment is a SE EL&U question on a slightly different topic, in which the use of commas was not criticized:
In conclusion, you do need commas.