Many adjectives have three degrees: positive, comparative, and superlative.

Longer adjectives form their comparative and superlative forms with the words more and most.

When comparing two (and only two) things, use a comparative adjective.

When comparing more than two things, use a superlative adjective.

Some adjectives do not have comparative degrees. For example, no one can be more pregnant than another person. And some words like best and worst are already superlative forms. Such absolute adjectives have no comparative or superlative forms, although they may pop up in casual expressive writing and dialogue.

Ungrammatical: Chief Taft took one look and said, “He’s deader than dead.”

Ungrammatical: Sean squealed, “This is the bestest birthday I’ve ever had.”

Repeated adjectives should be separated by a comma or dashes.

If you want to describe a noun with two or more adjectives in a row, separate those adjectives with commas.

Note that some adjective-noun pairs are treated as one item. In cases like these, don’t separate the adjective(s) and the noun with a comma.

Here, the adjective little describes the adjective-noun pair red Corvette.

Proper adjectives, which come from proper names, should be capitalized.

Some proper adjectives have lost their associations with the names from which they were originally derived and should not be capitalized. Check with a dictionary.