How to Describe a Person?

The Introduction, Main Body, Conclusion help to structure the composition in a logical way. The Topic Sentence will define the main idea of the paragraph. Linking Words connect ideas, while the use of adjectives will spice up the description, making it more appealing to the reader.

Now, let’s dive deeper and let’s see what each element should contain as follow:

Introduction:

In this part, we are introducing the person to the reader, giving some general information about him/her, such as:

Where/When/How we met him or heard about him…

Name, place where he lives, occupation….

‘ Jenny is my classmate. We know each other since kindergarten. ‘

‘I met doctor Mike when I broke my arm. ‘

Main Body

The Main Body should be split into paragraphs, containing different subjects, that are introduced using a Topic Sentence, the main idea of each paragraph. The number of paragraphs depends on how many details we want to include in our description.

Dividing our Main Body into paragraphs, we should have the fallowing structure:

The first paragraph should give details about the person's physical appearance: high, age, facial features, hair, clothes. We can give as many details as we want, general or most specific ones, such as: eye shape, color, hair length, structure ….

‘ Jenny has dark browns, almond shaped eyes, whit long- thick eyelashes.’

‘ Marry is a gorgeous woman, with doll- like features, big blue eyes and raven dark hair.’

‘ Jenny, who is in her late teens, is still to short for her age.’

‘Mike is a middle- aged man, but looks younger than his age, because of his athletic constitution. He is tall and well-build, with black hair, cut short, in military style.’

In the second paragraph we present the character personality. We can write about his behavior, mannerism, actions, giving a more detailed view about his personality if we use examples :

‘ Doctor Mike is a kind man. He was extremely patient with my 3 year old son. Jeff was very scared and cried constantly, but doctor Mike tried to calm him down, using a soft voice and making funny faces.’

Or we can use adjectives:

‘Ted is an introverted person. He would rather stay home, reading a book, than go out with his friends.’

‘Mira is on outdoing and very friendly girl, with lot's of friends.’

‘ Dan is a very shy boy, and because of this, he usually sits alone during lunch time.’

In the third paragraph, we should write abut the person hobbies, interest, including a variety of activities like gardening, painting, writing, reading.

‘ Jill has the most beautiful garden in our neighborhood. She spends her free time caring for her flowers and trees.’

Conclusion

In the conclusion we sum up our feelings about the person, why we admire her/him, why we don’t like him/her, explaining and giving an argument to our description.

‘ I admire Mr. Davis for his courage and dignity in how he faced the last days of his life. He smiled still the very end. I will always remember what he said: ‘ The smiles can be small and short, bright and wide, ironic, happy, sad or gentle. But, for every situation you have to face in life, it's always a smile whit you can respond.’

Brainstorming

Brainstorming before we start to write will help to describe the person more easily: to include or exclude the details we want to appear in the description. Filling the keywords in the above list will give enough information to start writing our first draft.

Brief information

Where you met or heard about him:

Name:

Occupation:

Age:

Physical appearance

High:

Build:

Complexions:

Hair

Face:

Eyes:

Nose:

Mouth:

Cheeks:

Forehead:

Jawline:

Personal traits

Positive:

Negative:

Interest:

Hobbies:

How we think, feel about this person and why:

Knowing the key elements will help us to write our description in a logical, successive way, constructing a detailed portrait of the person, which is the ultimate goal of our composition.