It is difficult to describe faces because we don't have a familiar vocabulary for them. It's not necessary for us day to day to describe exactly what faces look

It is difficult to describe faces because we don't have a familiar vocabulary for them. It's not necessary for us day to day to describe exactly what faces look like. Sure, we have chiseled jaws and high cheekbones, but there isn't a word for the many different styles of noses and shapes of lips. And we don't have a point of reference for the words that would be associated with the faces of our friends. I suspect that if verbal descriptions of faces were a constant part of society, that our ability to imagine faces based on authors' descriptions (using that shared vocabulary) would be much better. I also wonder what experience police sketch artists, like the one who drew Anna Karenina, have when reading books, as they probably think about this sort of thing much more frequently. As a sidenote, it may seem like I'm appealing to the now somewhat discredited Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but I'm only saying that our lack of vocabulary constrains what we express, not that it constrains our cognition. Personally, when I read I do visualize things, but I don't have strong visualizations for people's faces, much like mcjiggerlog elsewhere commented.