How can I access the textual mission descriptions in the journal?
I'd like to turn off the marker and find my objectives based on the descriptions, but can't remember the exact details for all those side quests.

Misc quests have no textual descriptions. Anyway what NPCs say would be "my XXX is at cave XXX go find it", which isnt much difference from quest markers

Unfortunately, the quest log is incredibly minimal.
There simply are no descriptions apart from the single sentence, at places where they couldnt get away with half a sentence.
You will be unable to play without markers, the game is not designed to be played without them.
Often questgivers wont even tell you where to go.

I have no idea why they chose to make it this way, it is without a doubt the worst quest log since Daggerfall.

Probably done to avoid recording spoken names of all radiant quest targets - since there's quite a long list of valid targets that tend to get selected for different quests given by different NPC's.

And since this generation is apparently allergic to unspoken text dialogue; markers are the only choice left.

*puts on flamesuit* Never played Daggerfell but I'll be damned if any journal or quest descriptions are worse than what Skyrim offers. The quests themselves could be very nice if they were fleshed out a bit more and were made possible to complete without using quest markers.... which to me amounts to cheating, problem is there isn't much choice.

I have about 15 or so misc quests. I have no idea what any of them are for or where to go. Talk to X, who is X, why do I want to speak to X, where would I find X (directions please not just a marker)

Edit : For spelling mistake

Questing has been streamlined away so that you can get back into the ACTION sooner.

Maybe, maybe not, back then, journal descriptions tend to be quite vague; hands up in the air if it was to facilitate using your brain or RP search for yourself on their part.

New players tend to get miffed now if their objective isn't attached to a giant florescent arrow.
There was a number of threads awhile back of people complaining skyrim quests not specifically pointed out optional objective paths in quests yes?

I don't think that is the reason, afterall there are 300+ books to read in the game and reading those hardly gets you into the action sooner.

I think it was just a poor design choice. They must have realised the misc quests especially were poorly logged whilst playing it and testing the game and yet they still choose to leave it

Argh! With this "minimal journal", I feel like a pizza delivery boy, not an adventurer.

For me, this takes away A LOT of the atmosphere. At first I was happy I could un-check missions, so I wouldn't see the quest marker for them. I thought it was an improvement over Oblivion. But without mission descriptions, this is useless.

An RPG that doesn't give me the right atmosphere is useless. It's all about atmosphere for me.

I think I'll go back to playing something else now. I guess people who like to think about the game and missions, instead of "just get into the action" are no longer the target audience of this series.

there are no descriptions to access. the magic pizza slice is your only concept of where and why you are doing anything. there is no journal, just a chore list...

yeah they fudged up on that account big time - presumably a pit fall of the radiant story system?

This, along with little choice in quests and dialogue, is one of my absolute biggest critiques of Skyrim for something intentional.

I never had a problem finding a place I needed to go to - I actually turn off all quest markers and only ever turned them back on for one or two quests (one I can think of would be the civil war quest where you have to find the courier...) it was usually easy to find a new dungeon I needed to get to, as it'd be one on my map I hadn't been to yet, and I would have its name somewhere (or just remember what the NPC said). Finding a person was slightly more difficult, but due to the small number of people this didn't take long either.

I agree I miss a more in depth journal though, the current one doesn't seem to hold much purpose at all