While preparing for IELTS Academic, I was practicing Writing Task 1.
In the task it is said:
Below is a map of the city of Brandfield. ...
Commonly, the first sentence of an essay should rephrase the task, so I came up with:
The map presents a sketchy scheme of ...
By sketchy I mean something that contains few details, as according to Cambridge definition.
But I'm afraid that sketchy is not the appropriate word for the formal writing, and I am certainly sure that IELTS Academic essays should be formal.
Research before asking:
1. Google responds to "sketchy meaning" with 2 slang dictionaries out of 3 top results.
2. In 4 out of 5 first not slang dictionaries that Google gave (Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, Cambridge, The free dictionary, Macmillan) the word sketchy has an informal meaning among others. 3. However, in SkELL there are 126 entries of sketchy in British National Corpus.
The question: Is this appropriate to use sketchy in this case?
Answer
"sketchy" for me has the same connotation as "dodgy" - a slang term that means that something or someone is of a questionable nature - for example, a "sketchy neighbourhood" would not be a place one would want to live. Slang or not, the way in which you are using it doesn't seem to fit the context - to my ear at least.
I'm sure there are many alternative ways of phrasing this, but seeing that you are describing what the map depicts, and the map is only a rough draft, the phrase "The map presents a rough outline of..." seems more fitting, and less entrenched in slang.
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