Talk:Rhetoric and Composition/Description

In wonder if "Why Write a Descriptive Essay?" could be rewritten to better approach the subject from a student's perspective. It also might serve the article better by narrowing the focus to descriptive essays, rather than discuss description generally. Perhaps there could be an emphasis on how concrete descriptions increase an essay's persuasive ability.

In the subject, "Abstract Descriptions Versus Concrete Descriptions", better examples might be created that demonstrate how specificity and vivacity are gained through concrete descriptions. Perhaps this could be done by pairing each of the abstract descriptions with a better description of the same object that uses concrete language.

And the sensory descriptions might be rewritten to be better examples of their sense. Some, such as "flowers in spring" (smell), "sandpaper" (touch), "falling off water skis" (touch), or "lutefisk or lefsa during the holidays" (taste), may not be the clearest examples of using a specific sense to provide a description.

Shawn Blank (discuss • contribs) 18:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)Shawn_Blank

A section about using/avoiding cliches may also be useful to students.

-- Mindy (November 18, 2008) This section jumps right into genre. This should either be changed or explained better.

--JonathanP 22:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC) I'm trying to figure out what to change on this Description page. The suggestion below is from almost a year ago and seems outdated. The TODO list states, "We need a sample descriptive essay here to really make this chapter complete. I'd also like to get those questions in a better format (maybe using the built-in list features." Should I still make a sample essay even though the page basically has one (the Minnesota environment piece)?  Also, what questions is the TODO list referring to?  The ones under "Genre Analysis, Genre and Composition" seem fine to me.  I can still change them, though.

--Mattbarton.exe 00:43, 2 November 2005 (UTC) We need to format the images on this page a bit better. See example in the oral presentations section.