description

Definition:

A rhetorical strategy using sensory details to portray a person, place, or thing. One of the progymnasmata and one of the traditional modes of discourse. See also:

• Composing Descriptive Paragraphs and Essays
• 40 Essay Topics: Description
• How to Write a Descriptive Paragraph
• Model Descriptive Paragraphs
• Description of a Nudist Trailer Park
• Sarah Vowell's Place Description
• Truman Capote's Place Description
• Description in Stegner's "Town Dump"
• My Home of Yesteryear
• John Updike's Descriptive Narrative

Etymology:

From the Latin, "to write down"

Examples and Observations:

• "If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with course black hair, and gray eyes--no other marks or brands recollected."
  (Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Jesse W. Fell, 1859)



• "The descriptive writer's main task is the selection and verbal representation of information. You must choose the details that matter--that are important to the purposes you share with your readers--as well as a pattern of arrangement relevant to those mutual purposes. . . .
  
  "Description can be an engineer describing the terrain where an embankment must be built, a novelist describing a farm where the novel will take place, a realtor describing a house and land for sale, a journalist describing a celebrity's birthplace, or a tourist describing a rural scene to friends back home. That engineer, novelist, realtor, journalist, and tourist may all be describing the very same place. If each is truthful, their descriptions will not contradict each other. But they will certainly include and emphasize different aspects."
  (Richard M. Coe, Form and Substance, Wiley, 1981)

Pronunciation: di-SKRIP-shun