Start by asking where the heat went
One question extracts most of the available information: at what point in the sequence was the leaf first heated? A description that says steamed or pan-fired and puts it early is describing a green tea. One that mentions withering and oxidation and then drying, with no heat in between, is describing a black tea. One that mentions shaking, resting and then fixation is describing an oolong, and the position of the fixation relative to the shaking is the single most informative thing on the packet. If the description never mentions heat at all before the drying, you are probably looking at a white tea. This works because the answer is structural rather than stylistic: a producer can exaggerate a roast level or a garden's altitude, and cannot move a fixation step without making a different tea.
Words that are almost always a translation, not a claim
Fermented is the big one. Chinese usage applies fa jiao across changes that Western science files separately, so a Chinese source describing black tea as fully fermented and oolong as partly fermented is using the term correctly within its own vocabulary and is not saying anything microbial. The test is positional: if the word appears before the fixation step in the sequence, it means oxidation; if it appears after the tea is otherwise finished — a pile, a brick, a warehouse — it means genuine microbial activity and the word is right. Semi-fermented on an oolong packet means partly oxidised. Post-fermented on a pu-erh packet means what it says. A second translation artefact worth knowing: red tea and black tea swap referents between Chinese and English, so a Chinese red tea is an English black tea, and an English dark tea is a Chinese black tea. Nothing about this is anybody's fault and all of it is confusing.
Numbers that are not measurements
An oxidation percentage is the clearest example. There is no standard measurement behind it, the figures circulate because they sound precise, and they are quoted with a confidence that no laboratory result would support. TeaHQ records oxidation as a descriptor and never as a percentage for exactly that reason. Read a stated percentage as a rough position on a scale someone invented, not as data. Wither figures are a second case: they are real numbers with a real meaning inside a factory, and they describe what the next machine needs rather than how thorough the manufacture was. Roast counts and scenting round counts are a third: both are genuine, both are quoted inconsistently, and both have a hidden cost that the number conceals — each scenting round means another pass through a drier for the base leaf, and each roast means another month of resting before anybody can tell what it did.
Words that are real and checkable on the leaf
Some claims can be verified in your own kitchen, which makes them much more interesting than the rest of the packet. Plucking standard: unroll a wet leaf and count what you find — a bud with one leaf, a bud with two, or open leaf with stem. Shaping: a ball-rolled oolong opens over many infusions and a cut granule does not, and you can see which you have before you brew it. Oolong bruising: hold a spent oolong leaf to the light and look for a reddened margin around a green centre, which is the direct physical evidence of edge oxidation. Stalk content: look at the dry leaf of a strip oolong and see whether anybody paid for the picking. Smoke: a genuine pine-withered souchong carries resin under the tea, and a tea smoked after manufacture carries tar over it. None of these requires equipment and all of them beat a description.
What a good description looks like, and what silence usually means
A useful processing description names the operations in order and is specific where specificity is cheap: which fixation, which shaping, sun or oven at the drying, roasted or not and over what. It does not need numbers. A description that is entirely adjectives — smooth, refined, artisanal, traditional — is not withholding information because of trade secrecy; there was usually nothing specific to withhold, because the seller bought a finished tea and does not know. That is worth saying without cynicism: a great deal of perfectly good tea is sold by people several steps removed from its manufacture, and a vague description is more often ignorance than deception. What it does mean is that you are on your own, and the leaf in front of you is a better source than the packet.