Describe a thing and write a review

A review of something you bought, an advert to sell something, a description of a lost bag — each time you need to name several features of a thing at once and say what feelings it gave you. For this English has two tools: the order of adjectives and the pair -ed and -ing.

The order of adjectives. In some languages the order of adjectives is free, and in others most adjectives come after the noun. In English, before a noun, the order is fixed:

The logic is this: the closer a feature is to the thing itself, the closer it stands to the noun. An opinion is what you think; people can argue about it, so it stands furthest away. Size and age change with time. Colour, origin and material are already properties of the thing itself. And the purpose almost joins the noun: dining table — a table for meals, running shoes — shoes for running. If you are not sure, ask yourself which feature is more permanent. That one goes closer to the noun.

Which feature goes in which group. The hardest thing is to tell an opinion from a fact. An opinion is something people can argue about: lovely, beautiful, ugly, comfortable, expensive, cheap, useful. A fact is something you can see or measure: size (big, tiny, long, tall), age (old, new, young), shape (round, square), colour. Origin and material answer the questions "where from?" and "made of what?": Italian, Swiss, wooden, leather. Material is often given by a simple noun with no ending at all: a stone house, a gold ring, a wool coat. The same with purpose: a kitchen table, a sports bag. Such a noun always stands last, right next to the main word: together they sound almost like one word.

In real speech people hardly ever put more than three adjectives in a row, but they keep the order inside any pair:

A comma and and. You can separate two opinion adjectives with a comma: a lovely, comfortable sofa. Two colours are joined with and: a black and white photo. When the adjectives stand after the verb, away from the noun, you also need and between the last two: The bag is small and black.

-ed and -ing. Many adjectives about feelings live in pairs: bored and boring, interested and interesting, tired and tiring. The form in -ed says what a person feels: something has acted on them, and they got tired, surprised, bored. The form in -ing says what causes this feeling: a film, a journey, a piece of news. Many languages have similar pairs — German gelangweilt and langweilig, überrascht and überraschend, French ennuyé and ennuyeux, surpris and surprenant.

The same with excited — exciting, worried — worrying, annoyed — annoying (a little angry — making you a little angry), embarrassed — embarrassing (feeling silly in front of people — making you feel silly in front of people).

A person can have the -ing form too, if he or she causes the feeling in others: He's boring — people get bored when they talk to him, She's an interesting person — people like listening to her.

How to check. Ask yourself: who feels here? If the subject has the feeling itself — -ed: I was bored — I felt it. If it causes the feeling in others — -ing: The film was boring — the film made people feel bored. That is why a thing, a place, an event almost always gets -ing: a film or a journey has no feelings. -ed is for people and animals: The dog looks bored.

With which verbs. Both forms can stand not only after be. With get the -ed form shows a change: I got bored after an hour. — after an hour I began to feel bored. With feel and look — how a person feels and how they look: I feel tired. You look worried. Before a noun both forms are possible: a tired child — a child who feels tired, a tiring day — a day that makes you tired.

Compare:

Both sentences are correct, but they say different things. Mixing them up means saying something about yourself that you didn't mean.

Don't say this. ✗ I'm interesting in history → ✓ I'm interested in history. It is the person who feels the interest, so you need the -ed form; interesting would say that you yourself are interesting to others, and you don't put in after it.

Check yourself. The lecture was long, nothing happened, and you wanted to sleep. How do you say how you felt at the lecture? Put in the right order: jacket, leather, black, a. What goes into What a ___ day! — tired or tiring?