Descriptive notation

Its distinctive features are that it refers to files by the piece that occupies the back rank square in the starting position and that it describes each square two ways depending on whether it is from White or Black's point of view.

With the exception of the knight, each piece is abbreviated as the first letter of its name: K for king, Q for queen, R for rook, B for bishop, and P for pawn.

As knight begins with the same letter as king, it is abbreviated as either N or Kt, the first being the modern convention.

In 1944, Chess Review received many letters debating the change from Kt to N.[3] Each square has two names, depending on the viewpoint of White or Black.

In the earliest chess literature, natural language was used to describe moves.

Over time, abbreviations became common, and a system of notation gradually evolved.

For example, the common opening move 1.e4 was originally recorded as "Pawn to King's Fourth" or similar; by the time of Howard Staunton's The Chess-Player's Handbook (1847), this had been abbreviated to "P. to K's 4th.

Generic descriptions which refer to all four sectors of the board are also possible, e.g. "all four bishops were developed on N2."

Maxims such as "a pawn on the seventh is worth two on the fifth" make sense from both players' perspectives.

Algebraic notation specifies a capturing piece's destination square; meanwhile, because unambiguous captures lack coordinate information in descriptive notation, visualization is more taxing, since it requires remembering exactly which pieces are attacking which.