Exercise 1: Recognizing Sensory Images

Exercise 1: Recognizing Sensory Images

The following sentences describe a delicatessen. Each sentence contains at least one sensory image. For each or the sentences, identify which of the physical senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) the writer has appealed to.

1. 
   A large refrigerator case again stone wall was always humming loudly from the effort of keeping milk, cream, and several cases of soda and beer cool at all times.
   

Physical senses: sound

2. 
   Stacked on top of the counter were baskets of fresh roll sand breads that gave off an aroma containing a mixture of onion, car away seed, and pumper nickel.
   

Physical senses: smell

3. 
   Mr. Rubino was always ready with a sample piece of cheese or smoked meat as a friendly gesture.
   

Physical senses: sight

When you use sensory images, you will stimulate readers’ interest, and these images will stay in their minds.

Exercise 2: Recognizing Sensory Images

Recognizing Sensory Images
The following paragraph contains examples of sensory images. Find the images and list them in the spaces provided. Topic sentence is underlined.
I knew how a newspaper office should look and sound and smell—I worked in one for thirteen years. The paper was the New York Herald Tribune, and its city room, wide as a city block, was dirty and disheveled. Reporters wrote on ancient typewriters that filled the air with clatter; copy editors labored on coffee-stained desks over what the reporters had written. Crumpled balls of paper littered the floor and filled the wastebaskets—failed efforts to write a good lead or a decent sentence. The walls were grimy—every few years they were painted over in a less restful shade of eye-rest green—and the atmosphere was hazy with the smoke of cigarettes and cigars. At the very center the city editor, a giant named L. L. Engelking, bellowed his displeasure with the day’s work, his voice a rumbling volcano in our lives. I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world.
FROM WILLIAM ZINSSER,
Writing with a Word Processor
Sensory images
Sight: its city room, wide as a city block, was dirty and disheveled, ancient typewriters, Crumpled balls of paper littered, The walls were grimy, a less restful shade of eye-rest green, the most beautiful place

Sound: the air with clatter, his voice a rumbling volcano

Smell: coffee-stained desks over, hazy with the smoke of cigarettes and cigars