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00:00Huh?
00:09Kids find tickets hidden in their candy and win a contest.
00:13Their prize is a tour of a candy factory.
00:17It's led by the factory's owner.
00:20The book sounds, uh, really great?
00:24Oh, I've read that story.
00:29It is great!
00:33Dear Tim and Moby,
00:35My teacher says I should use adjectives when I write.
00:39Why?
00:40From Sarah.
00:41Hey, Sarah.
00:43Adjectives are one of the eight parts of speech.
00:46Those are categories of words that do the same thing in a sentence.
00:50Like how verbs tell you the action that's happening.
00:53And nouns name the people, places, and things in a sentence.
00:58Nouns modify, or describe, those nouns.
01:02They tell us how nouns look or feel, what they're made of, how many there are, or who
01:07they belong to.
01:10Adjectives can add details to your writing, making it more interesting.
01:14Well, let's take a look at your first line here.
01:18Instead of kids find tickets hidden in their candy and win a contest, let's go with five
01:25Lucky kids find golden tickets hidden in their candy and win a big contest.
01:31Their prize is a thrilling tour of a giant candy factory.
01:36It's led by the factory's strange and mysterious owner.
01:41Yeah, sounds a lot more intriguing now, right?
01:45The adjectives add more information, and they liven up the sentences.
01:49Whoa, you're a noun-modifying machine, all right.
01:55But you've taken it a bit far here.
01:59Adjectives can make your descriptions more vivid, but only up to a point.
02:03Five lucky kids find shiny golden tickets in their delicious candy and win an international
02:09contest.
02:11Feels kind of overloaded, doesn't it?
02:14We don't need to describe every noun in the sentence.
02:17Describe it for stuff that's important or interesting.
02:20Like, does the reader really need to know that the candy's delicious?
02:25And isn't anything that's golden also, you know, shiny?
02:30There.
02:31Five lucky kids find golden tickets in their candy and win an international contest.
02:36Hear how much better it flows with just two adjectives gone?
02:40Ooh, that one's a doozy.
02:43Their prize is a thrilling and special and awesome and top-secret tour of a giant candy
02:48factory.
02:49So, first of all, when you have a list of more than two adjectives in a row, it's usually
02:54best to separate them with commas.
02:59But in any case, thrilling, special, awesome, and top-secret is way more info than we need
03:04about this tour.
03:05I mean, thrilling, special, and awesome all mean about the same thing anyway, right?
03:12Let's lose special and awesome.
03:14They're not quite as specific as thrilling.
03:16Oh yeah, good catch.
03:20When you have two adjectives in a row, you can separate them with a comma, like we did
03:24here, or with an and, like we did earlier.
03:28It's your decision on which one sounds better in a particular sentence.
03:32Yep, a lot of the decisions about adjectives are up to you.
03:37There's no strict rule for how many to use or which ones to pick.
03:42Different writers will make different choices, depending on their unique style.
03:47You can also choose where to place adjectives in a sentence.
03:51They can go before a noun, like you've done, or after a noun, often with a form of the
03:56verb to be.
03:59The more you practice writing, the more you'll figure out what sounds best.
04:03You'll develop your very own writing style.
04:07Well, there's a lot more to learn about adjectives, not to mention all the other parts of speech.
04:11Whether you're writing or speaking, the parts of speech are like your tools.
04:16Understanding how they work will help you build strong sentences.
04:19Plus, you'll have the language to talk about how our language works.
04:24You won't have to say, put that what's-it kind of word before that who's-it kind of
04:29word and cut the thingamajig over there.
04:32Learn the parts of speech, and your sentences will be...
04:36That's not how you're supposed to use those.