Description Essay

At work, nurses, police officers, engineers, and countless other professionals must be able to observe carefully and describe accurately both people and circumstances. In college, students write lb reports, research projects, and many types of assignments that require careful observing and recording of information. Description may be a small part of your paper - a paragraph or two - or your entire paper may be one long description of an event, person, or object. To determine how extensive and detailed a description should be and to avoid being boring or unclear, writers of descriptions must focus on their readers' needs and their purposes.

To write an effective description, follow these guidelines:

1. Consider your reader. If you are describing the results of a lab experiment, persuading a friend to try a new restaurant, or informing your employers of a hazard a work, you will write very different descriptions, not only because your topics are different, but also because your readers are different. However, in all descriptions, you will keep this question in mind: What do the readers need to know? If you choose information that exactly fits the readers' needs, your description will be clear and interesting.

Briefly analyze your audience before you begin, and remember the readers as you brainstorm, draft, and revise.

2. Clarify your purpose. If you are describing a vegetarian diet, you should know whether you are trying to inform readers about what vegetarians eat or trying to persuade them to eat vegetarian meals. Different purposes will result in different choices about what information to include. Most of the time, your description will be easier to read if your purpose is clear to readers as well.

3. Observe closely, using all the sense. Before you begin to write, list all the details you can observe. Even though you may not include them all in your paper, you might uncover some original insights or impressions. Remember that not all your observations will be visual details. Use all your senses, and record smells, tastes, sounds, and textures.

4. Identify the dominant impression. If you listed every detail about a movie, a restaurant, or a vacation spot, your readers would be more confused than enlightened. To find the dominant impression, review the list of details you made. Some details will seem more significant than others because they most effectively convey the impression you want the readers to have.

5. Organize your description logically. For example, if you were writing a review of a new restaurant for local newspaper, you might have two or three paragraphs describing food and prices (entrees, appetizers, side dishes, and desserts), a paragraph describing decor and atmosphere, and a paragraph describing clientele (whether the restaurant caters to families, college students, or professionals.