It’s often better to show with an example than to tell with a general description. Examples provide concrete evidence in your document. Featured writer Caitlin Guariglia uses an example from a well-known film to illustrate a point in her essay about her family’s relationship with food.

And the obsession with eating! My grandmother feeds us constantly. My dad and I always laugh at that scene in Goodfellas where the mobsters show up at two in the morning after killing someone, and one mobster’s mother whips up a full pasta meal for them. We know that my grandmother would do the same thing: “Are you hungry? Here, sit, eat!” Grandma holds interventions over pasta. If she is unhappy with something someone in the family is doing, she invites everyone over for pasta, and we hash it out together.