· Rhetorical question to attract attention
· Cultural knowledge of the places
· Lots of positive hyperbolic language
· Not only cultural knowledge, but knowledge of the scenery/areas
· Passive voice – only personal when brief and relating to how amazing or bad the place is – people are more likely to listen if it’s a personal account
· Lots of metaphors & similes & sibilance to make the place sound mellifluous.
· Literally only anecdotal when talking about how beautiful the surroundings were – e.g. when she’s saying what they did and where briefly while mainly describing the beauty of the place they stayed/what they could see/what they eat or drank.
· Alliteration again to make it sound nice
· When it’s anecdotal, it’s very descriptive about surroundings. (Sights, smells, sounds etc.)
· Extremely descriptive and over the top in some anecdotes: ‘Sleepy village of wooden houses hugging a sparkling inlet’
· Statistics properly referenced or from own research – e.g. how many people live there/how low or high the crime rates are etc.
- ‘40,000 Native Americans live in Portland’
· Know a bit of history about the place as well to add to the cultural knowledge factor:
- ‘Unratified treaty created the Coast Range Reservation in the 1850s. Road-diggers turned up Alsea graves in the 1930s when they built the coastal highway.’
· Statistics with distance as well, saying how far one place is from the next (shows knowledge of ability to navigate the city well)
Such as
- ‘Bend is 1,100m above sea level’
- ‘Dunes sweep for 50 miles from Florence to Coos Bay; the most impressive rise over 150m, at Umpqua.’
· Knowledge of wildlife native to the area
· Link to anywhere mentioned (as much as is possible) – like bars/restaurants/cinemas etc. Copy the link to their address if possible as well e.g.
‘(616 East Burnisde, rocknroseinc.com)’
· Pictures to go alongside descriptions – brief description under the photo and name of the photographer
· Just really hyperbolic descriptions – much more than needed
· Light humour e.g. ‘We gorged on cheddar samples, and nearly left after consuming half our bodyweights in lactose …’ ‘late-night bars whose names I can't remember’ – only very rarely is it not specific (for humour purposes)
· Biblical descriptions to really emphasise ‘Heavenly’
· Even mentions street names where places are. Very detailed.
· Constantly mentioning statistics such as ‘1.6 acres of new and used volumes’ (even the amount of magazines in a book shop)
· Mentions names of well-known people as well so also implies knowledge of ‘important’ people.
· Says all the quirky places to go, describes what they are/do, so essentially reviews these places while mentioning and linking them
· Shows knowledge of the climate etc.
