Understand What Description Is

Description

Writing That Creates Pictures with Words

Understand What Description Is

Description is writing that creates a clear and vivid impression of the topic. Description translates your experience of a person, place, or thing into words, often by appealing to the senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

Four Basics of Good Description

  1. It creates a main impression — an overall effect, feeling, or image — about the topic.
  2. It uses specific examples to support the main impression.
  3. It supports those examples with details that appeal to the five senses.
  4. It brings a person, place, or object to life for the reader.

In the following paragraph, each number corresponds to one of the Four Basics of Good Description.

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Being able to describe something or someone accurately and in detail is important both in college and in other settings. Describing something well involves using specific, concrete details. Here are some ways that you might use description:

COLLEGE For a science lab report, you describe the physical and chemical properties of an element.
WORK You write a letter to your office manager describing the unacceptable conditions of the office refrigerator.
EVERYDAY LIFE You describe a jacket that you left at the movies to the lost-and-found department.