--- title: Describing: senses, showing and precise words — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Describing: senses, showing and precise words», a lesson of the english course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Good description lets the reader stand inside the scene, and the trick is to use more than your eyes: close them in a busy m --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/) / Describing: senses, showing and precis… # Describing: senses, showing and precise words Lesson 41 of the english course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/0/) — Good description lets the reader stand inside the scene, and the trick is to use more than your eyes: close them in a busy market and you hear the stall-holders shouting, smell the hot doughnuts and feel elbows bumping yours. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/1/) — "We had a nice cake at the nice party and it was nice" tells us nothing; one precise word ("sticky", "lemony", "lopsided") paints a picture, while piling up "big, huge, enormous, massive, giant" just makes the reader wait. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/2/) — Show, don't tell: instead of "She was scared", write what fear looks like ("Her hands shook. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/3/) — She held her breath and listened") and let the reader work out the feeling, which readers love doing. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/4/) — Strong verbs do the work of a weak verb plus an adverb: "walked slowly" becomes "trudged" or "crept", each with its own picture; and a fresh simile ("as quiet as a sock in a drawer") surprises, while "as quiet as a mouse" has been heard a million times. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/5/) — Characters can describe things in their own voice: a Glasgow girl saying "It's pure dreich oot the day" ("pure" means very, "dreich" means grey, wet and gloomy, "oot the day" means out today) gives us both the weather and the speaker at once. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/6/) — Description uses the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch; many writers only use sight. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/7/) — Precise words give a clearer picture than general words like nice, good, big or bad. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/8/) — Piling up words that mean the same thing (big, huge, enormous) does not add meaning; one well-chosen word is stronger. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/9/) — "Show, don't tell" means letting actions, body language and details show a feeling instead of naming it. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/10/) — A strong verb can replace a weak verb plus an adverb: "walked slowly" can become "trudged", "crept" or "dawdled". - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/11/) — A simile compares two things using "like" or "as": "The lake was as flat as a plate." - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/12/) — A cliché simile has been used so often that it no longer surprises, like "as quiet as a mouse". - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/13/) — Asking "what made it scary?" or "what did it look like?" turns a plain statement into description. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/14/) — In Scots, "dreich" describes grey, damp, gloomy weather, and "pure" can mean very. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/15/) — In Australian English "heaps" means lots or very; in Gen Z slang "main character energy" means acting like the star of a film. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/41-describing-senses-showing-and-precise-words/16/) — Adjectives describe nouns and adverbs often describe verbs, but nouns and verbs carry most of a picture. - ← previous: [Openings that hook the reader](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/40-openings-that-hook-the-reader/) - next →: [Building tension and suspense](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/42-building-tension-and-suspense/) - ↑ back to [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/)