<p>Okay so I have two main grammar questions that I was thinking about. </p>
<p>1) Consider the sentence: "State the difference between money and real GDP."
Is it saying "state the difference between MONEY GDP and REAL GDP" or "state the difference between MONEY and REAL GDP?" ie- the first one the difference is between money GDP and real GDP, while in the second one the difference is between money (as in the currency) and real GDP.</p>
<p>Is there any way to change the meaning of the sentence, or to make it less ambiguous? </p>
<p>2) So I know that if two adjectives precede the noun, you use separate the adjectives with a comma if their order can be switched (coordinate adjectives are the ones where you use a comma, I think). </p>
<p>Anyways- what if there are two adjectives, and their order cannot be switched?</p>
<p>"He lived in the isolated back-water South American town." Where does the comma go, if there is one. After isolated? It seems strange to have three adjectives in a row without a comma.</p>
<p>Thanks for any help and please correct anything that I may have done incorrectly. Thank you!</p>
<p>Your first question is not a grammar question. It is an economics question. What does “money” mean? What does “GDP” mean? What does “real GDP” mean? It depends on the full context of your sentence, and the intended reader.</p>
<p>I am not aware of a big rule about “commas” separating adjectives. What about “the big bad wolf” or “the bad big wolf” or the “big and bad wolf”. A comma between “big” and “bad” is at best irritating. But if you have “the big black giant quirky wolf” commas surely would help the reader sort out the meaning. But “big bad black wolf” probably doesn’t require commas. No doubt there is a style guide (or two) for situations such as the one you’ve brought up. I would apply intuition and logic.</p>
<p>But the SAT does not test for “correctness” in the subtle examples you provided. The SAT questions are simply not that subtle.</p>
<p>“State the difference between money and real GDP.” </p>
<p>There is no way to modify this without significantly changing the sentence structure. </p>
<p>“Explain what makes money different from real GDP” removes the ambiguity, but significantly chances the sentence structure. So the short answer: there is no way to remove ambiguity with punctuation via the use of a comma. It’s more about common sense and context- what’s more likely, being asked to compare money and real GDP, or being asked to compare money GDP and real GDP.</p>
<p>“State the difference between real GDP and money.”
-----This is probably the best way to remove the ambiguity without changing too much of the sentence structure. By putting the adjective first, you make it clear that it is only describing the first noun (which the comma makes clear), and not the second noun, which is in this case “money.”</p>
<p>Hopefully this is what you were looking for.</p>
<p><em>EDIT</em>— And for the second example, “He lived in the isolated back-water South American town.” can be left as is or switched to “He lived in the isolated, back-water South American town.” The comma (to me, at least) is awkward, so I’d just leave it as is.</p>
<p>The problem with the sentence on GDP is that the author assumes you know something that you may not. The sentence cannot possibly mean the difference between real GDP and money (as in currency) because that is nonsensical. It can only mean the difference between money GDP and real GDP which are two economic terms. It is assumed unnecessary to make it clearer because you don’t compare or determine differences between real GDP and money. However, if you are completely unfamiliar with the economic terms then the fact that the author put “money,” a word that is normally thought of as a standalone noun, first can cause confusion. The way to make it clearer is add GDP after money or change the sentence to “State the difference between real and money GDP,” because that way you will understand that “real,” an adjective, must go with “GDP” unless you are from Brazil and think it is referring to your own money.</p>