Hi Sana,

Indeed this is creative writing, which relies on its own style – while it’s understandable and there would be nothing really wrong with it in the right context, in a formal setting or exam it would inappropriate (unless it was, for example, a writing exam which allowed creative use).

Phil

Sir ,did you receive my cooment

Hi , we have multiple adjective clauses one after another modifying the same noun in the above example. These kinds of sentence I see in while reading books. Can we write same in formal writing and exams or can we drop relative pronoun and place and in place of comma

Hi Sana,

That is what we would call a sentence fragment, essentially a sentence that is missing a main verb. Technically, in prose these are grammatically incorrect, and it would be best to avoid them in formal writing, but they are used in practice (for example in more creative writing) to add information that complements the previous sentence. Essentially these are phrases or clauses that would otherwise be connected by other punctuation such as a dash or semi-colon, but have been separated to create a new sentence instead. This is usually done to create a dramatic pause, or to add something is perhaps surprising.

Note these may also be used in response to questions, when information is requested and the fragment completes that information.

Phil

Hi, adjective clauses can’t stand alone because they need independent clauses . but a lot of time I have seen sentence like this.

Lucy , who had been living near my house.
The girl who topped the class .

Could you explain can we use these sentence in our formal writing.

Thank you so much, this is really helpful!

Hi Marta,

Ah, I thought that was covered in the article but I don’t think it is – commas in these circumstances are rather flexible, so the short answer is that we don’t always use commas, no. Where we have a long list of adjectives, we’d often use commas, particularly when it’s a list that includes a conjunction. There’s no hard rule on this, some general rules may be put in place, such as add commas for lists including more than two adjectives, or when we want to add emphasis to an adjective in an unusual order. The problem is that sometimes the need for commas or not may depend on what type of adjectives we’re using. For example, if we have multiple adjectives of the same type, commas would help separate similar ideas and also show that they are considering different aspects (e.g. “the big, unusual, weirdly-shaped box”). If we have multiple different short adjectives that flow together quite naturally, we might have no commas as it’s clear we’re building one picture rather than considering different aspects (e.g. “The cheap big grey coat is my favourite.”).

I hope that helps!

Phil