Introductions

Getting to the Introduction Remember, before you begin writing your paper, you should have gone through the following steps: research, analysis, brainstorming, thesis statement, and prewriting. Yes, this seems like a load of work, and it is! This is what allows you to begin writing a masterpiece and not a mess. On to the writing!

Purpose of an Introduction The main purpose of an introduction is to guide your reader to your thesis statement. Objectives: 1.To get the reader's attention. 2. To move the reader into your paper, while showing what you are writing about before you state the thesis, which is the essay's main idea. 3. To limit your essay by moving from a general discussion of the subject to the specific thesis that your paper wants to illustrate. 4. To state your thesis before moving to the body paragraphs that illustrate it. http://isu.indstate.edu/writing/handouts/setv/prints/SETV9P.html

Trusted and True

Problematic General Statements Too General: Crime has been an issue throughout time. More Specific: The question of the severity of punishments for juveniles is an issue that has garnered attention due to the increasing number of juvenile shootings in the last several years. Too General: Man has always wondered about the meaning of information. More Specific: The Age of Information brought about through the digital revolution of computers has posed significant questions about the value and worth of this information: Does having instant access to every newspaper and journal blog in the world make us more intelligent, value-based people? http://www1.aucegypt.edu/academic/writers/introduction.htm

How to Catch Interest Anecdotes – personal story Description of a person or place Question Startling Statement Proverb Quotation Reference to another essay Dialogue

Interest Killers The Dictionary Definition: Many papers begin "Webster's defines X as..." and then continue to discuss the topic. This type of introduction has become very stale with teachers, who have seen it thousands of times. The "Cinema scope" Intro: These often crop up in introductory history classes. Avoid sweeping panoramas such as "Throughout the march of history, one thing has been true..." or "Many novels have considered the ways in which good people become corrupted by money." Cutting to the Chase too Quickly: It is too easy to go too far while avoiding overly general introductions. Avoid jumping right into a thesis statement and do not try to cover every topic in the first paragraph. It is difficult to say how specific to be in an introduction, but consider the idea that this part of a paper provides "the lay of the land" for a reader who will then know why the paper is worth finishing. Never Cutting to the Chase: Don’t lose your reader in a long winded introduction. http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/intros.html