Nouns designate "things" or abstractions. And adjectives limit nouns. This arrangement seems simple enough at the "see the red ball" level. However, when we consider the more complex subject of medical writing, we see that authors frequently misuse these parts of speech. The benign connective tissue new growth known as granuloma pyogenicum is usually a single rapidly-growing red-to-purplish small pedunculated raspberry-like lesion often varying in size from that of a pea to that of a cherry. This example contains several instances of overuse of modifiers, especially adjectives. The noun "growth" is modified by a long string of adjectives plus "tissue," a noun-used-as-an-adjective. And worse is thesingle rapidly-growing red-to-purplish small pedunculated raspberry-like lesion; in this breath-taking conglomeration we find that adjectives ("single," "red-to-purplish," "small," etc), a noun ("raspberry"), and an adverb-verbal combination ("rapidly-growing") all modify the noun "lesion." To correct this type of long-chain run is relatively easy. For example,