Naming identifies the notable features of the subject being described; detailing makes the features more specific or particularized. Naming answers the questions What is it? and What are its parts or features? Detailing answers questions like these:

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To add details to names, add modifiers—adjectives and adverbs, phrases and clauses. Modifiers make nouns more specific by supplying additional information. Notice how many modifying details Dillard provides in her description of the weasel:

He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard’s; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs’ worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window.

— ANNIE DILLARD, Teaching a Stone to Talk

In addition to providing details that show readers what this specific weasel looked like, Dillard also conveys her thoughts and feelings during the encounter. For example, when she writes that the weasel’s “face was fierce,” she is making a judgment. She uses details like this to make readers see the weasel as a wild animal, not a soft and cuddly pet.

In describing people, writers often combine physical details with details characterizing aspects of the individual’s personality. These characterizations or evaluations let readers know something about the writer’s thoughts about the person, as the following examples illustrate:

My father, a fat, funny man with beautiful eyes and a subversive wit . . .

— ALICE WALKER, “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self”

I was afraid of her higharched bony nose, her eyebrows lifted in half-circles above her hooded, brilliant eyes, and of the Kentucky R’s in her speech, and the long steps she took in her hightop shoes. I did nothing but fear her bearing-downauthority.

— EUDORA WELTY, “Miss Duling”

Sometimes physical details alone can be enough to symbolize a person’s character or the writer’s feelings toward that person, as in the following passage:

Rick was not a friendly looking man. He wore only swim trunks, and his short, powerful legs rose up to meet a bulging torso. His big belly was solid. His shoulders, as if to offset his front-heaviness, were thrown back, creating a deep crease of excess muscle from his sides around the small of his back, a crease like a huge frown. His arms were crossed, two medieval maces placed carefully on their racks, ready to be swung at any moment. His round cheeks and chin were darkened by traces of black whiskers. His hair was sparse. Huge, black, mirrored sunglasses replaced his eyes. Below his prominent nose was a thin, sinister mustache. I couldn’t believe this menacing-looking man was the legendary jovial Rick.

— BRAD BENIOFF, “Rick”

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