Lasting Impressions: Introductions and Conclusions as Frames

First impressions are important. They can impact everyday interactions, and in writing, they can make or break whether your reader will continue reading your work at all. If you’re writing a paper that must try and convince an audience of something—if you are writing an argumentative paper, for example—then your first impression is even more important.

Just as we think about introductions as first impressions, we can think about conclusions as last—or lasting—impressions. For example, when a great television show has a disappointing final episode, your lasting impression of the show might change for the worse. That said, lasting impressions can sometimes improve your perspective. Perhaps the last episode of the television show wraps up all loose ends, or leaves room for you and your friends to debate.

Since your conclusion is the last paragraph in your essay that your readers will read, you can think of it as your opportunity to leave a lasting impression with your reader. You want your final sentence to stick out in your readers’ minds so that they can remember your work. Whether you choose to end with emphasis, wit, or wonder; whether you call an audience to action or cool down a hot topic, your final sentence should be memorable without departing significantly from the overall tone of your essay. Therefore, like how a frame encloses a painting, your introduction and conclusion enclose your essay’s body paragraphs, pointing the reader to what’s important inside.

First Impressions

So you’ve been asked to write an essay, and the assignment sheet’s evaluation criteria says that you should pay special attention to how you introduce and conclude your essay. Maybe your instructor has told you that the introduction and conclusion are two of the most important parts of your essay.

That’s a lot of pressure!

You might ask yourself: How do I start? Why are the introduction and conclusion so important? If they are so important, how do I write good introductions and conclusions?

You might first think of an introduction as a “first impression.” When you meet someone for the first time, you might start to form a certain impression about them based on how they act. Are they loud and rude when they introduce themselves to you? Is this person quiet and peaceful? You might even form an impression based on what this person is wearing. This first impression that you build about this person could affect further actions. Will you continue to talk with this person? Will you end a conversation?

Your introduction—along with your essay’s title—makes an impression upon the reader in a similar way. It offers them a view into your essay and gives them a chance to ask themselves if they want to keep reading or not. You want your audience to keep reading your essay! So, it’s important that your introduction encourages them to do so.

It is useful to think of your introduction as trying to do a few general things:

• Intrigue the reader so that they want to read more
• Introduce the specific topic of your writing
• Provide a clear statement of your writing’s central point/idea (often, this is your “thesis statement”)

While those tasks might seem clear enough at first glance, you might ask how you can achieve those things in your introduction. In other words, if those points describe an effective introduction, then how do you write an introduction that can achieve those points?

Effective Introductions

Described below are a few effective introduction strategies that you can use to begin an essay. It is important to write based on the needs of each unique writing situation. This means that you shouldn’t view any introduction strategy as a formulaic means of beginning your essay, or as a “one-size-fits-all” solution to starting your essay. Some of these strategies will work better or worse depending on your essay’s topic, purpose, rhetorical situation, and goals. They also may work differently depending on your specific argument, structure of your paper, or your writing style. For example, providing extensive historical context in the beginning of a shorter literary analysis might not work—such context might work better in a longer research paper. On the other hand, perhaps your literary analysis is demonstrating historical criticism and needs some context to set up its thesis.

Experiment with these introduction strategies and find what best meets the needs of your specific paper. You can even consider mixing a few of the strategies below to create a unique introduction. For example, you could grab the reader’s attention, provide historical context, and establish immediacy in an introduction to a long research essay on some major issue.

Dive into Analysis

In this strategy, your introduction immediately begins analyzing your texts. Avoid general ideas only somewhat related to your topic. Avoid questions and indirect sentences. Instead, discuss some of the difficulties or points of interest that your essay will explore. Set up your essay’s argument and some of the problems you’re trying to solve. Be specific. All of this can be started from the first sentence.

Example: “Although history books have not presented it accurately, in fact, the Underground Railroad was a bi-racial movement whereby Black and white abolitionists coordinated secret escape routes for those who were enslaved.”

Provide Context

Concise background narratives can be effective ways to begin some papers. Background information identifies and describes the history and nature of a well-defined research problem with reference to the existing literature. These introductions are often effective in longer essays, because this context can immediately set the stage for a sophisticated formal argument that will occupy the bulk of the longer paper. Such an introduction can lay the foundations for what a reader needs to know in order to comprehend your topic, and in order to understand your argument. Depending on the specific purpose of an essay you are required to write, you can offer relevant context.

Example: “One hundred years ago there were only 8,000 cars in the United States and only 144 miles of paved roads. In 2005, the Department of Transportation recorded 247,421,120 registered passenger vehicles in the United States, and over 5.7 million miles of paved highway. The automobile has changed our way of life dramatically in the last century.”

Grab Reader’s Attention—Include a “Hook”

It’s good to grab the reader’s attention near the beginning of any essay, so long as it doesn’t sacrifice the essay’s accuracy or seriousness. You can think of this as a “hook,” a way to “hook” the reader into your essay. Examples of hooks include unusual or interesting—but topically relevant—facts, statistics, or (very short) news lines.

Example: “Few people realize how much the overuse of antibiotics for livestock is responsible for the growth of antimicrobial—resistant bacteria, which are now found in great abundance in our waterways.”

Analyze Language

Use polysemy (multiple meanings) of a word or phrase related to your topic or argument as a means of setting up and entering the conversation. If you come across an interesting or unique word as you plan and write your essay, consider looking it up in the Oxford English Dictionary and thinking about its various meanings and how they complicate your discussion.

Example: “While the term American Dream may be interpreted differently depending on who uses it in what context, this term is generally used to describe ‘the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative,’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary.”

Establish Immediacy

Immediately begin showing the reader why your topic must be discussed, why your essay will attempt to answer difficult but important questions, and how your essay will approach its investigation of the topic. This can help you establish a roadmap for your essay, especially effective in longer essays.

Present the Thesis Statement

Finally, the end of your introduction must offer the essay’s thesis statement. The thesis statement is the main idea of the entire essay and works the way a topic sentence works in a paragraph. To understand how to write a strong, clear thesis statement, see Chapter 7 “Take a Position: Thesis statements.”

Example: “This essay argues that, because not all information on social media is reliable, its users have to become critical consumers of information by understanding how to tell its accuracy.”

Ineffective Introductions

Below are types of introductions that, while sometimes tempting, are usually ineffective. Try to avoid these introduction styles, though note that some of them—such as the personal anecdote—can be useful in certain writing situations.

Using a Quotation

Carefully chosen and important quotations can be good ways to begin papers, but you must be very careful when selecting such a quotation. It is easy to take a shortcut when including a quotation by selecting an inappropriate and unnecessary quotation, something that you might find online quickly. In order for a quotation to work effectively in an introduction, it should do the following:

• Fit with your topic: Avoid selecting a quotation that “sounds good.” Your quotation should make sense with your topic.
• Be useful: When you’re selecting a quotation, ask yourself why it must be included. What purpose does this quotation serve in your introduction and not as support in a body paragraph? Why include this quotation here? What does it do or how does the quotation function in this introduction?
• Have ethos: The author or speaker of the quotation should have some sensible connection to your topic. For example, Lady Gaga might say something about freedom and democracy, but quoting her in a formal essay about South African apartheid—an area that she, a pop music star, might not have credible authority or experience to speak about—might not work to your advantage.

Defining a Word

Like quotations, definitions can be useful ways to introduce an essay, yet it is difficult to make a definition work in an introduction. It is tempting to define a concept or word in your introduction to establish a foundation for further discussion; however, it is also tempting to define common words or concepts, or to simplify words and concepts that cannot be described in a single definition. You should avoid defining things like “love” and “life” in an introduction, for example, because those concepts are either too complicated to pin down in a single definition, or are seen as too common to need a definition. If you are thinking about defining a word, consider the following as effective ways to do so:

• Importance: If you define a word in your introduction, it should be a word that is important to your essay. Don’t define what a binary opposition is, for example, of you are not making heavy use of and reference to that word. Your essay must depend upon that word.
• Archaic word: If your essay is using an old or archaic word that your audience might be unfamiliar with, then it could be useful—or even necessary—to define it in your introduction.
• Complication: Your essay might make use of a word or concept that has multiple meanings, and the fact that this word or concept has multiple meanings might be an interesting idea to bring up in your introduction.

Personal Anecdote

Personal anecdotes or stories are typically most effective in specific writing situations, like opinion pieces, autobiographies, memoirs, or narratives. Personal anecdotes are usually ineffective in analytical writing, as well as formal research-based writing. These other genres are more interested in objective, verifiable information, and a personal story is less able to be verified and is less likely to be objective.

Broad Statements about Humanity

It is tempting to build an introduction following an upside-down triangle or funnel format, where you begin an introduction with a broad statement and narrow it down to a focused, narrow thesis. This is certainly a valid and effective way to structure an introduction; however, you must be careful to avoid making statements that are too broad. If you choose to build a funnel-style introduction, you should work on a general statement closely related to your topic. For example, imagine you are writing a literary analysis on Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. An opening statement that is too broad and disconnected might look like this:

“Books have multiple meanings, and can be interpreted in different ways by different readers.”

Not only is this sentence obvious—your audience almost certainly knows this—but this sentence also tells us nothing about your topic. Reading that sentence alone, we have no idea what you’re writing about. So, instead of starting your introduction with that sentence, you could begin by saying something like this:

“Sherwood Anderson’s composite novel, Winesburg, Ohio, engages the word and concept ‘grotesque’ in unique ways throughout its stories, complicating the very definition of the word.”

This first sentence tells readers what you’re writing about (Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio) and begins to set up what you’re saying about it (that it complicates a word or idea). This is all much more specific while still being general enough to work as a first sentence to an introduction. It’s general because it doesn’t necessarily tell its audience any more beyond that the Anderson text complicates a concept. Ideally, an effective introduction would proceed to elaborate on this complication, with each sentence providing a bit more detail, ultimately arriving at a definitive thesis statement about the book.

Missing Thesis Statement and/or Purpose of the Essay

After gaining the readers’ attention to your topic and offering relevant context, you must make a transition to your thesis. If your essay omits the thesis statement, your reader cannot understand your main point well from the beginning, no matter how many clear and reasonable topic sentences you offer in body paragraphs.

Additional Tips

Because your introduction is so important as a first impression of your essay, your introduction could benefit from a non-linear approach. Consider the following additional tips when you work on your next writing assignment’s introduction:

• Consider not writing an introduction until you’ve written a few body paragraphs about your topic. After you have some material, you goals, purpose, rhetorical situation, and even your central point or thesis all become a bit clearer and more defined. After you’ve written a few paragraphs, think about what they are saying, and then start writing an introduction that sets up these paragraphs.
• If you always begin by writing an introduction, consider returning to the introduction as you write your body paragraphs. You could even return to the introduction after you write each paragraph. In all cases, reread your introduction and ask yourself if it adequately matches and sets up your work. We often learn more about what we want to say as we start saying it, so your first introduction might not match what you are actually saying, because what you are actually saying might be more refined and defined now that you’ve started saying it.

For further information, you can view this video on “Writing an Introduction for an Academic Essay.”

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