Position of adjectives

Adjectives don’t usually cause big problems for learners of English. However, there are a few important points to remember about their position within a sentence.

Adjectives normally occur before a noun or after certain verbs. Most adjectives can be used in both positions. When an adjective appears before a noun, it is said to be in attributive position:

• They had a successful meeting.

• That’s an interesting idea. 

• The meeting was successful.

• His idea sounds interesting.

Only one position possible

Certain adjectives are always used attributively, that is, they can be used only before nouns:

• He’s my only client.

• They closed down the entire department.

• Her former boss gave her a bad reference.
  

Most attributive-only adjectives belong to one of the following three categories:

• adjectives used to intensify meaning, such as absolute, total, utter, veritable

• adjectives with restrictive meaning, such as chief, main, principal, sole, only, major

• adjectives that classify things in a temporal order, such as present, future, former, latter, previous, late

Some more adjectives used only in attributive position:

• other, further, elder, northern / southern / eastern / western

Some adjectives can be used only predicatively, that is, after a verb:

• I’m not afraid of telling him the truth.

• It’s time to get ready.
  

Many predicative adjectives have the prefix a-. For example:

• asleep, awake, alike, alive, alone, ablaze, afloat

Some more adjectives used only in predicative position:

• fed up, well, unwell