Microsoft Word and Adjective Order

Despite having worked for more than 30 years as a technical writer, I have to admit that I've never come across the concept of adjective order. That's probably because technical documentation doesn't use many adjectives and certainly not long strings of them. 

English grammar does have an established order for adjectives: Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Colour, Origin, Material, and Purpose. So we write "the big brown cat" instead of "the brown big cat". 

I had never come across the rule for adjective order until I read this article from Office Watch about Microsoft Word and the problem that its grammar checker has with adjectives. Word will suggest the correct order for three adjectives, for example, but if you string together six of them, you are out of luck. 

I don't see this as a big problem as I don't usually write long strings of adjectives, even outside of technical documentation. But it is something to be aware of if you are using Word for something like marketing copy.