this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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"Dead" and "unarmed" are adjectives and if they were being used like you thought, they should have a comma between them. I agree that it's potentially vague, but if you read it in your BBC broadcaster voice it should help
It's ambiguous. Adjectives don't need a comma like that, especially when there are two. You don't say "look at that small, red, fire hydrant", you just say "look at that small red fire hydrant" (and technically, you could call "fire" an adjective there too).
I'm not sure whether it is a hard and fast rule, but that sentence to me should be:
Looks like it's a fairly complicated and nuanced grammar rule:
https://style.mla.org/coordinate-adjectives-commas/
Could you put a common after dead to make it less ambiguous?
you could, but that would just make it sound like the cop shot a man who has already been dead even more