Thursday, January 3, 2019

word order - solid black line vs black dashed line




I am describing a chart and got confused about my intuition and Google results.
So I'd usually refer to a "solid black line" and there are 1,130,000 results (with quotes) for that against 320,000 for "black solid line". So far, so good.
When it comes to "dashed black line" it sounds weird to me though it's the same wording order. There are 214,000 for that against 318,000 results for the reverse order "black dashed line".



So, my question is: dashed black line or black dashed line? (considering that I am also mentioning the solid one, I was going for the first option not to break the pattern)


Answer



Generally the order of adjectives is: opinion, size, physical quality, shape, age, colour, origin, material, type, purpose - so... I would consider 'solid' and 'dashed' to be adjectives of physical quality, and I would write 'a solid black line' and 'a dashed black line'.




Adjectives Order (Cambridge)


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