What are Supporting Details?
A text usually consists of a variety of ideas interrelated to each other. All these main ideas cannot be fully understood and comprehended by a reader unless supported by further details. These details that make the understanding of the main idea in any text easier for the reader are known as supporting details and are the very necessary elements of any text. These supporting details add more to the plot of any text as well as to the writer's main motives behind the writing. It is only through these supporting details that a text can be fully understood for its meaning, analyzed, and interpreted easily. Some of the types of supporting details you can add in a text are follows:
Details About the Settings
Describing the setting where a scene in the story took place, the weather in which the story was set, or the era of which the text is a representative is very useful for a reader. Such supporting details can add more to the reader's emotional attachment of a text and help him or her make predictions about certain twists in the plot.
Details About the Character
Adding details about a specific character you are describing in your works is always a great idea. The supporting details to add about a character, whether real or fictional, include the clothing, physical stature, and the facial features of a character. You can also describe the hair, walking style, tone of voice, and other elements about a character in any text if you feel the need to do so.
Details About the Historical Background of the Text
Supporting details can also describe the historical background of the text and of the time it was written about. You can also add details about the social, political, cultural, and economic status of the region at a given time that is being discussed in your text.
What are Supporting Details and How Do You Write Them?
Whenever you are creating a piece of writing to prove a point, you will have to back it up with credible information. This is where the need of supporting details comes in. Different types of supporting details help you in writing a good essay with proven details and descriptions.
Supporting details are details in any text that follow the introductory statement and make its understanding easier for the readers. These details can either be simple descriptive statements, comparisons and contrasts, or persuasive arguments. Whatever forms these come in, their presence after a topic sentence is very important to the readers’ understanding and agreement with the text they are reading.
Students who add more supportive details in their work are likely to get better grades. Here are a few important tips for writing these supporting details in a better way to enhance the value of any topic sentence for the readers:
Personal Observations
One common type of supporting details in an essay is personal observations. When you are writing an essay, you dedicate a portion of it purely to your own personal observations regarding the topic. Here you can mention your past experiences. While writing personal observations, one must keep in mind to write it in a way that clearly distinguishes it from facts. This would help in giving your essay a clear view for the readers.
Supportive statements are all about details and those details are added using any of the five-human sense of perceptions. Try adding as much detail about an idea of element as you can by relating them to how the senses of a human being would receive those. This makes your text influential and interesting.
Facts
The most important type of supporting details is facts. Using facts in your essay would give a more professional look to it. Essays with facts are more credible. In order to mention facts in your essay, you will have to conduct deep research on the topic. You will have to collect relevant facts from authentic sources. There is no specified place for facts in the essay, so you can adjust them as per your need.
Statistics
When you are writing on a topic, it is always advisable to mention numbers. Numbers make your writing look more credible. You can search for relevant statistics and add them to your essay as supporting detail. Make sure that the statistics that you are using are 100% correct or you will be providing your readers with false information. It is better to add proven statistics and data in your supporting statements that can singlehandedly prove the point you are trying to make in your topic sentence. Always add the proven data and cite the sources to build credibility if possible.
Be Professional with Vocabulary
The kind of register and jargon you add to the supporting statements says a lot about your competence regarding the field you are writing in. Make use of academic and professional words and phrases that your readers can easily understand.
Examples
Examples are supporting details because they help readers in relating to the topic. Examples are always necessary to give because they prove the reality of the topic. All good essays always have a few examples as supporting details.