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What Makes A Good Description? Lyrics by Stephen Pringle

2014

The description annotation is quite possibly the most important annotation on a text, especially when it comes to lit. It’s the first annotation a user will see when they click the page, and their portal deeper into the text. A good description provides the hand and footholds for a reader to climb up a difficult text; as well as an outline to its structure. Let’s take a look at some well written descriptions:
This is from the final scene of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
What’s good about it?- It gives a neat, concise summary of what happens in the scene. In a lot of Shakespeare, a big hurdle to understanding is simply working out what’s going on in the first place, since the plots can be very elaborate and complicated.
- Internal links guide the reader to the most important parts of the scene.
- A piece of well-chosen media helps to illuminate the scene and prevent a wall-of-text from happening. This particular video is from a famous adaptation of the play by Kenneth Branagh.
How could it be improved?- There should be more internal links. Final scenes in Shakespeare are full of big, set-piece reveals, and the user should be able to click through to them from the description.
- The writing could be tightened in places to be more factual and less discursive.
- We should be given a bit more detail on what's gone on before: Beatrice and Benedick have a long history of verbal jousting throughout the play, and it would be good to give the reader a (clickable) sense of that
This is from Simon Armitage’s poem “Hitcher”, recently one of the most popular texts.
What’s good about it?-Again, it gives a summary of the poem. Poetry is by its nature often quite cryptic, pushing potential readers away; with a skeleton of its events, they can appreciate the finer points of the poem with less fumbling in the dark.
- There is a link to an interesting part of the poem.
- There are links to buy the book: this helps to connect us to the wider literary community, and also encourages readers to engage further with the writer’s work.
How could it be improved?- There should be more internal links-- currently there’s only one.
- The opening paragraph is a bit waffly; the poem could be summarized in fewer words.
- It doesn’t contextualize the poem, either in terms of the poet’s career, or the time he writes in.
This is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese.
What’s good about it?- There’s a well-chosen illustration which adds some warmth to a very human sequence of poems. The image is also accredited.
- It provides some good contextual knowledge to help readers understand the poem’s place in history, how they were received, and even mentions the history of their criticism-- how they’ve been differently rated in different eras.
- It cites sources: this makes the writing much more credible, and gives readers options for further reading.
How could it be improved?- Obviously, it’s very long (I chopped half of it off). Readers, to put it bluntly, don't have time for overlong descriptions (they might as well read the whole text), and it's important to condense as many of the points as possible with something this long into links-- let the links do the work, and you'll come up with a much crisper piece of online journalism.
- Some of the claims feel generalized and overstated. This is a minor criticism, but it’s important to remain objective, even when annotating works we really admire.
Credits
Stephen Pringle

Stephen Pringle

About “What Makes A Good Description?” by Stephen Pringle

Read the complete lyrics to "What Makes A Good Description?" by Stephen Pringle in 2014. On Lyrks you can follow along with the full text, explore the artist's discography, and discover related songs. The track is often categorized under Non-Music, Meta, Literature.

"What Makes A Good Description?" is performed by Stephen Pringle. in 2014 This page provides the full lyric text for fans who want to sing along, study the songwriting, or compare versions across releases. Lyrks organizes lyrics by artist and song slug so you can bookmark and share a stable URL. Music lyrics help listeners connect with emotion, narrative, and rhythm in a track. Whether you are learning English, researching a favorite chorus, or preparing for karaoke, having accurate line breaks and section labels (verse, chorus, bridge) makes the experience easier. We link to the official artist profile on Lyrks where available, including biography snippets, top songs, and chart placements when we have that data. If you enjoy "What Makes A Good Description?", explore more songs by Stephen Pringle using the links below. Chart and trending pages on Lyrks highlight what listeners are searching for this week. For copyright or correction requests, see our DMCA and contact pages.

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