often when describing people we use the dominant impression. The dominant impression is the main effect a person has on our feelings or senses. We give the dominant impression by selecting the most important feature or character trait of a person and emphasizing it. Adjectives like shy, beautiful, ambitious, or generous can easily give a dominant impression. This impression is then supported by details The first topic sentence in a paragraph will usually give you the dominant impression. Look at the student essay and underline the words in the topic sentence of each body paragraph that give you the dominant impression.