Descriptive paragraphs provide details that engage the five senses to help readers visualize what is being described. They often follow a spatial order arrangement, describing items from left to right and top to bottom to create a word picture. Signal words are used to indicate spatial relationships between objects within a descriptive paragraph. The topic sentence should name what is being described, while the controlling idea gives an overall impression, and details use adjectives to enhance the description.

1. Descriptive
Paragraphs
Professor: Leticia Esteves
QLU-Panamá/ Fall 2015
Academic Writing
English 101

2. Descriptive paragraphs include details that appeal to the five senses:
A good description is a word picture: the reader can imagine
the object, the place or the person in his/her mind.

3. Descriptions usually follow a pattern known as spatial order.
Spatial order is the arrangement of things in space.

4. A writer plans where to put each object in a word picture in
the same way artists plan where to place each object in
painting.

5. In a description, writers often use spatial order to organise
their ideas.
Spatial order is the arrangement of items in order by space.
• Describe things on the left.
• Describe things on the right.
• Describe the things at the top.
• Describe the things at the bottom.

6. Spatial Order Signal Words
Just as there are words to show time order, there are
words to show spatial organization
on the left at the top of
next to in the center
in front of in the front of
inside outside behind
between in back of across

7. Sentence for Descriptive Paragraphs
The topic sentence of a descriptive paragraph should name
the topic.
The controlling idea of a descriptive paragraph should give
the overall impression of the place you are describing.
The details or secondary ideas should be full of adjectives.

12. How to write a
descriptive paragraph…