Student Writing Handbook Fifth+Edition

Description / 95

See online at [http://www.wiley.com/go/wnwstudentwritinghandbook.]

Sample for English

Sample for Social Sciences

Sample for Mathematics

Sample Workplace Writing

Sample Technical Writing

Note that the description below, developed for a science class, omits the imagery a
literary paper may include. Compare with other sample papers online to see how a
description is tailored to meet a specific audience.

SAMPLE foR SCIENCE

In a botany class, students wrote scientific descriptions of a species of tree. They
were to include growing conditions and ecological relationships as well as physical
descriptions of shape, size, leaves, trunk, fruit, and root system.

Red Cedar, the Stalwart Tree

The red cedar, Juniperus virginiana, sometimes called red juniper or, simply, cedar, grows in dry,

rocky areas from Nova Scotia and Ontario south to Florida and west to the Dakotas, Nebraska,

and Oklahoma. While it prefers hills, it does not grow at high altitudes and will grow as well along

lakes and streams. Usually no more than 40 feet tall with a trunk no more than 20 inches in

diameter, it generally takes a rather conical shape unless quite aged. Mature trees spread wider

and become round-topped or, in inhospitable climates, even distorted, particularly when exposed

to harsh winds as on a cliff or shoreline. The red cedar’s ridged or lobed trunk, often buttressed at

the base, has a light reddish-brown bark that hangs in shreddy strips, fringed at the edges. The

four-sided twigs, green from the covering of minute leaves, support dark green or reddish-brown

leaves 2 mm or less long, scale-like, opposite in pairs. The leaves, which stay on for several

years, closely overlap and are generally oppressed, rounded, glandular.

Crushed, they emit an aromatic odor, and the oil from these leaves is used as perfume. The

fruit, about the size of a small pea, fleshy, dark blue, tasting sweetish with a resinous flavor,

provides food for songbirds, turkey, grouse, quail, fox, and opossum. The tree’s worst enemy

is fire, and even a small fire will damage its root system, which lies close to the soil surface.

Although few insects bother the red cedar, it is the bridging host for apple rust. As a result,

orchard growers make up the minority that strives to rid their area of these tough, stalwart,

and often picturesque trees.