Essay Introduction
Here’s an advice on introduction writing. Don’t write an essay introduction, ever.
Why? Because your reader doesn’t want your introduction. He wants your punchline. That’s why he picked up your essay. So put your punchline first, and ditch the essay introduction. Ditch the whole concept.
Why else shouldn’t you write an essay introduction? Because if you write an essay introduction you’ll put in too much information that isn’t really relevant to your punchline. We all do that. It’s pretty well impossible to avoid. And why is this bad? Because it bores your reader and it wastes a lot of time.
So don’t write an essay introduction.
But doesn’t your reader need a certain amount of background information in order to make sense of your punchline? Yes, but put it second. That way you and your reader only end up dealing with what’s clearly relevant. An essay introduction is best if it’s mixed into the working part of your essay, and not called an introduction.
It looks like this on paper:
‘Why was Hungarian cable broadcasting so vibrant and healthy between 1891 and 1925, and so sickly in France and Britain, where the medium had been developed first? Research suggests that technical variations explain it all. The answer, surprisingly, has nothing to do with technology, and more to do with legal and cultural differences between Hungary and the rest of the world. Parisians and Londoners had live music and oratory for casual listeners on the street by 1880. The main Hungarian enterprise, by contrast, was conceived as a home-delivered audio newspaper, with a newspaper’s editorial profile. French and English households were suspicious telephone lines’ intrusion into their houses. Hungarians welcomed them. Budapest even had unusually obliging communications laws, which allowed for private ownership of rights of way for cable-stringing. So, by the time the French and British systems were collapsing into disuse, the Hungarian cable system had begun simulcasting on radio, and it did so until it was destroyed in the Second World War.’
See? All this information about the differences between France and Britain and Hungary would have been pretty off-putting if it had come before the central line with the word ‘answer’ in it.
So don’t put your background information first. Don’t write an essay introduction. If you’re forced to do one, by some unenlightened teacher, then at least don’t call it ‘Introduction’. Remember, the idea is to make all the information short and easy.
>>Read about how to use transitions within the paragraphs of your essay. |
