Discriptive Notation

Descriptive notation is the form of notation used to record chess games that was, up until the end of the twentieth century, the most popular notation in English-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries.

It is now rarely used, but many older chess books and articles are written using this form to document games. It is therefore useful to be aware of it, and I hope these pages will be useful to you, should you need to 'translate' a game from an old source.

To identify a square on the chessboard we simply give its 'rank and file'. Descriptive notation has identical naming of the file element of a square's addresss, but the rank element differs.

The files are named according to the piece that occupies that file at the start of the game. As there are two rooks, knights and bishops, the one we are talking about is made clear by stating that pieces alleigance (whether is is on the King or Queen's 'side' of the board.

Using the same abbreviations for pieces that we met in the Algebraic Notation form we have the files named as shown on the right.

If you look at the board on the left you will see two numbers for the ranks; one for back and one for white. The ranks are numbered from the persepctive of the player - the rank of the board nearerst to the player is rank 1 the furtherst away is rank 8.

We have said that to identify a square on the chessboard we simply give its 'rank and file'. But that square will have a different identity from white's perspective than from black's. This could be confusing - and therefore Algebraic notation is now the 'norm'.

For example, if you look at square QB3 (from white's perspective) you will see that it is QB6 from black's perspective.

The Flash graphic below has the board squares labelled from white's perspective, black's perspective - or, if you like complicated diagrams, from both perspectives!

Now let's look at the coding for the pieces and moves.

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Discriptive Notation

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