Five Easy Methods For Starting Off An Essay
Often times, one can find themselves struggling to find the appropriate way to begin an essay. You must have a good introduction if you want to convince the reader that the rest of your work is worth the time it will take to read it. So how do you write a good introduction to an essay? There is no definite answer, but there are hints and tips one can follow in order to enhance their introductory paragraph. Here are five of them:
- Open with a captivating line -
- A good essay should grab the reader's attention right away. That means you need a strong and memorable opening line.
- A captivating opening line can be a question, a quote or any other writing technique you can think of, as long as it is phrased right.
- Discuss what you are going to do -
- In your opening paragraph, you should provide a brief overview of what it is you intend to do throughout the rest of your essay.
- Make sure you state what topic you will be examining and why you chose it.
- Avoid giving you opinion -
- Do not give your personal opinion on a topic in the opening paragraph. "I find this topic interesting" is fine, but something like "I find this topic right/wrong" shows a bias that may stop the reader from continuing.
- If you want to, you can always give your opinion at the end. In fact, I have always encouraged it as it wraps up the essay nicely.
- End the introduction with a lead in to the rest of the essay -
- You should end your essay with a line that encourages the reader to continue.
- An example of this can be seen in the introduction to this article. In an essay, however, you may want to use something a bit stronger than "Here are five of them."
- Keep it short -
- Remember, after the introduction, you still have a whole essay to write so don't make all your points in the opening paragraph.
- A long opening paragraph will make your essay seem like a heavy read and reading the whole thing will become a chore.
As you can see, writing the introduction to an essay is a lot more complicated than one might think. But once you have a really good opening paragraph, you'll be surprised by how easily the rest of the essay will come.