6.1.1: The Introduction

The title or headline is often the first element of an introduction. It gives the audience some idea of what the writing is about and perhaps suggests the main point. The book title The Chocolate Bible immediately tells the reader that what is inside will probably have nothing to do with religion but a lot to do with eating and preparing chocolate.

If the same book had been given an overly cute but less precise title such as Your Face or Mine? the reader wouldn't have gotten as much information. That information would have to come later, such as in this first sentence of the book:

Almost all of us love chocolate, but how much do you really know about this elixir of the gods?

Such a simple introductory sentence sets the stage by outlining the rough boundaries of the discussion to follow.

Usually a title alone or a single introductory sentence is not sufficient to introduce the reader to the material that will follow. For example, if we want to make clear that The Chocolate Bible is a book for manufacturers and marketers of chocolate, not consumers, then the following additional sentences can go a long way toward introducing the book:

You know the subtleties of its taste, and how to manufacture and market it in your area, but what about southern Japan? Northern Japan? What manufacturing techniques and marketing strategies would you change if you wanted to reach the Egyptian market with a similar chocolate product? There is considerable room around the world to create or expand the chocolate market. Will you profit in these new markets, or will your competitor? This book will show you how to successfully produce medium-quality and high-quality cost-effective chocolate for the mass market in a variety of countries on several continents.

Thanks to this introduction we readers now know this is a book about the chocolate business, with emphasis on international marketing and manufacturing. It is not a book intended for consumers.

The introduction limits the scope of the discussion to follow. That is, it provides a context for the writing. It should also give some hint of why it's worth reading. Unless the writer has a captive audience, it is the writer’s duty to capture the reader's interest and indicate why the writing should not be ignored. The chocolate book's introduction captures the reader's attention by suggesting that there is money to be made by reading on.

The type of introduction appropriate for one kind of writing might not be appropriate for another. If you are writing a newspaper article, you need to provide a summary of the whole article at the beginning so that editors can cut from the end and not have to cut out material in the middle or beginning. So your intro should contain the who, what, where, when, and how. That way, if the ending of the piece is snipped off, the article won't be hurt substantially; it will still make sense and communicate a lot of information. This same structure is appropriate for many business reports, in which the summary of the costs and the recommendations for changes in the business are made up front for the busy manager who wants to know the bottom line first and the details later.

So, one helpful rule in informative writing is to give the reader the overall picture of the article by clearly announcing your intentions. But don’t write this way if you are creating a novel. Here is an introduction to informative writing in the computer business:

This report argues that it is time to divest our interests in peripherals for large computers and concentrate instead on developing peripherals for desktop, laptop, and tablet computers.

This sentence sets up the reader's expectations for what is to follow. When facts and figures are presented later, the reader will have a context to fit them into. Imagine yourself as the reader of a similar report with the same content but without this introduction; the facts and figures are just thrown at you without any explanation of why you should know them. Such an illogical structure would destroy the effectiveness of the report.

In scholarly writing, the introduction also should mention what other scholars have said on the issue you are writing about. Give credit where credit is due, so that the reader can more readily evaluate how your own work fits in or how it challenges other work in the field.