Guidelines For Introductions

  1. Tell the reader why your topic is important.
  2. Give background information on your topic.
  3. Show what many people believe is true if your proposal will attempt to suggest something else.
  4. State several point that may contradict the point that the rest of the essay is to make.
  5. Ask questions to arouse the reader's interest.
  6. Use an interesting quotation.
  7. Tell a brief story.
  8. Tell what the body of the paper is going to deal with.
  9. Use a series of images to build up your proposal.
  10. Show different aspects of your topic.
    Thing to Avoid
  1. Don't make you introduction too long relative to your paper.
  2. Don't apologize for what you don't know.
  3. Don't talk to the reader as if they were sitting next to you (Now I will tell you...)
  4. Don't talk about the parts of your paper. (In my first paragraph, I will ...)
  5. Don't waste words in your introduction.
  6. Don't use overworked (cliché) expressions.
  7. Don't say the same thing over and over again.

From: Creating Compositions, Havery Wiener,1973, pp. 279-281.