Which sentence correctly uses commas to separate coordinate adjectives?

Question

A.
Melissa could not find her yellow jacket in the large unorganized closet.

B.
Jared wore his old, tennis shoes to mow the thick, overgrown lawn next door.

C.
Dennis did not want to see the long, boring movie at a crowded, overpriced theater.

D.
Shannon signed up for the challenging, writing course at the local, community college.

Answer 1

The correct sentence that uses commas to separate coordinate adjectives is:

C. Dennis did not want to see the long, boring movie at a crowded, overpriced theater.

In this sentence, "long" and "boring" are coordinate adjectives that describe "movie," and "crowded" and "overpriced" are coordinate adjectives that describe "theater." The commas are correctly placed because you can put "and" between the adjectives without changing the meaning (e.g., "long and boring movie").

The other options either use adjectives that are not coordinate or try to separate adjectives that should remain together. For example:

A does not have coordinate adjectives ("large" and "unorganized" are not interchangeable with "and"),

B incorrectly separates "old" from "tennis shoes" (they should be read together),

D incorrectly separates "challenging" from "writing course" (they are not coordinate adjectives).