Writing Longer Descriptions of Your Work

Hello everybody and welcome back to this module on writing captions and descriptions. Now that we’ve learned how to describe our work with a one sentence caption, in this lesson, we are going to look at how to describe the samples of your work with more specific details. This description may come under your caption, or it may be available to see when people click on your image. Whatever the case, providing viewers with a more detailed description, and important points will give them a better understanding of your work. These longer descriptions are in essence short paragraphs. Which can introduce interesting characteristics about your work, its effectiveness, and can also include your personal reflection. By the end of this lesson, you should have a longer description that looks something like this. This website that I created is attractive and easy to use. It helped the ABC Company increase their number of visitors. I am thrilled about this website and its impact. Let’s start by taking one of the captions we looked at in our previous lesson. We are now going to write a detailed description about this dining table. In the caption, you will notice there are no words describing its characteristics. What does it look like? Why is it special? Think about adjectives that talk about essential characteristics of your work or product. Essential characteristics are simply qualities that you can observe by feeling or seeing your product. For the dining table, we can use words like durable or modern. Maybe the table was custom designed in a particular shape or size. Try not to use general words such as good and nice. These words talk about your opinion and they can not be seen or felt in reality. Choosing descriptive adjectives rather than general ones, can make the description of your work look more professional and clear. Longer descriptions of your work should also include an explanation and your client. That is, it should include who and how your work helped. For example, if we go back to our dining room table example, we could imagine that this table helped the Boer family entertain many guests. Here’s what the sentence could look like. This dining table is durable and custom-designed. It helped the Boer family seat up to 20 guests for their 50th anniversary. Finally, the last sentence of your description should express positive feelings about your work. Associating positive feelings to your product can be a great way to market yourself. When you talk about your feelings, you will need to use adjectives again. But these adjectives may look slightly different from the ones we use to describe your work. Take a look at the following sentences. This picture is interesting, or I am interested in this picture. Which adjective describes a feeling? If you answered b, you’re correct. Adjectives that end in ed can be used to describe your feelings. But adjectives that end with ing are mostly used to describe people or objects. Let’s look at a couple more examples to clarify. I’m excited, or I’m exciting, which one is talking about your feelings about something? That’s right, a. What about here? His lesson is fascinating, or he’s fascinated by the lesson. Good, this time b is the adjective that describes the man’s feelings. So start your sentence by writing I am, and then select a positive adjective that ends with -ed. Like interested, excited, delighted, to name a few. For a dining table example, the concluding sentence can look like this. This dining table is durable and custom-designed. It helped the Boer family seat up to 20 guests for their 50th anniversary. I am excited about this table, and I’m happy about the results. Expressing your feelings about your project makes your description look more personal. Which can help viewers identify themselves more closely to your product. To review, writing a longer description should add even more value to your ePortfolio. It will certainly improve the chances of your ePortfolio to be noticed. So go ahead, and add longer descriptions to your uploaded photos or videos. As we looked at, in this lesson, make sure you include some descriptive adjectives, to show the characteristics of your work, and more details about how your work helped your client. You also want to finish up by sharing a positive feeling about your work and the experience. In our next module, we’ll look at presenting your experience and education like you would for a resume or curriculum vitae. I’ll look forward to seeing you then. Have a great day.