Commas: They're Not Just For English Majors Anymore. commas with...
 
Compound (or Coordinate) Adjectives
 
Commas with coordinate adjectives don't usually pose much of a problem, but they can be tricky.  "Coordinate adjectives" are simply those whose order you could reverse without affecting the meaning of the sentence.  If you CAN reverse the order, use a comma.
  • We eyed the rotten, wormy tomatoes with delight.
  • We eyed the wormy, rotten tomatoes with delight.
Simple enough. We can justify the comma between "rotten" and "wormy" because these are compound adjectives. It gets just a little more complicated in a situation where the adjectives are built into the noun itself.
    The main character seems brave around hairy, purple spiders, but she faints when she eats the burnt fried chicken.
This time we can again justify the commas between "hairy" and "purple" because they're coordinate adjectives.  But notice that we didn't place one between "burnt" and "fried."  Why not?  Reversing "burnt" and "fried" would give us the following:
The main character seems brave around hairy, purple spiders, but she faints when she eats
the fried burnt chicken.
Ugh.  One can imagine fried chicken burning, but this sentence suggests that the chicken was somehow burnt before it was fried.  
     
    A good test for whether adjectives are coordinate is to insert and between them. If the sentence makes sense with the and, you have compound adjectives and should split them with a comma.  Try it: 
    The flight attendant nervously passed out cans of tasty, fruit punch before jumping out of the airplane.
    In this sentence we placed a comma between "tasty" and "fruit." Placing "and" between "tasty" and "fruit" produces the phrase, "tasty and fruit punch." 

    Huh? In this case, the term "fruit punch" acts like a single term--much the way terms like "old geezer" or "fried chicken" usually do. Remember, ultimately we use commas to make our meaning as clear to the reader as we can. The comma between "tasty" and "fruit" just makes things confusing. 

    In this case, therefore, we would take out the comma:

    The flight attendant nervously passed out cans of tasty fruit punch before jumping out of the airplane.
next (NRE)


IE: Introductory Elements
CE: Contrasting Elements
2IC: Two Independent Clauses
CA: Compound or Coordinate Adjectives
NRE: Non-Restrictive Elements
A Few Other Situations (quotations, lists, etc.)