The beginning and end of your essay are positions of high emphasis. They deserve careful attention. Keep them short and purposeful. Use them to create and satisfy expectations. Get into the habit of reading your introduction and conclusion together, with an eye toward revision, as one of the last stages in your writing process. If you sometimes have trouble with introductions and conclusions, you may find the following suggestions useful.
I. Introductions [1]
First impressions, so the cliché goes, are often lasting impressions. This may be true in life, yet particularly so in writing. Your readers’ first judgments, even if mistaken, about the value of the topic, your skill as a writer, and your character as a person have a strong impact on their total response to your work.
If you get off to a good start, readers may stick with you through the rough spots, forgiving an occasional error or concentrating extra hard when you explain a complex idea. On the other hand, if readers don’t think your topic’s important or do think you’re uninformed, overly sentimental, or sarcastic, they’ll keep those impressions until you show them false. Your paper may even be set aside, unread.
It might be helpful, therefore, to think of your introduction as a first meeting with your readers. Here you take the first steps toward building a strong relationship, one that will last at least for the rest of the paper.
If you see your introduction this way, you’ll see also that no single pattern or format can meet the demands of every writing situation. Therefore, regard the suggestions below as exactly that–suggestions. In some situations they may not be helpful, but in others, for a particular purpose or reader, they may offer exactly the right approach.
Focus Your Reader’s Attention
Just because readers are people, they have individual interests, viewpoints, preoccupations, and needs. Your memo on staff reorganization may come across your supervisor’s desk just before an important luncheon meeting when she’s hungry and a bit edgy. She may not have been thinking much about the change you proposed last week, and what she has been thinking may not have been in line with your ideas.
In such a situation, you need to try seeing things from her point of view. You must reach beyond your personal perspective for the common ground you share. Having shown that you’re sensitive to (and perhaps even share) the reader’s needs, you’ll be well poised to state your ideas.
Because this type of introduction gradually moves from a broad concern with general issues to a narrower range of interest stated in a thesis sentence, it’s often referred to as a “funnel.” Notice how the following introduction focuses attention on the thesis:
During the past year our sales have grown well beyond the level projected in last April’s report, A Regional Marketing and Sales Strategy. This success demonstrates that we have a good product, a strong marketing plan, and an effective sales force in the field. As planning for the coming year begins, it’s now time to consider how we can implement this strategy on a national level.
Begin With a Fact or Example
By now, you understand the importance of concrete, specific details in your paper’s body. Details can also be strong ways of opening and closing, as they give your reader a concrete, specific connection to the subject:
Last July, Duke, a four year old Labrador retriever, was dragged behind a pickup truck on a rope and left to die on the desert. Fortunately, he was found and taken to the Humane Society where his wounds were treated and he was gradually nursed back to health. Eventually, he was adopted by Bill and Linda, a young couple who say they couldn’t imagine finding a better pet. Not all stories of animal abuse end as happily as Duke’s, but the Humane Society works hard to help all animals in distress, and it deserves your support.
Note a Common Misconception
If your readers were fully informed on your subject, they wouldn’t be need to read your essay. So, whether their misconceptions are due to lack of information, failure to draw valid conclusions from factual information, or some other reason, it’s often helpful to acknowledge misunderstandings at the start. In doing so, you show you’re aware of other views, and also show why your paper is important: to correct these mistaken ideas, to bring about better understanding:
When I first tell people that I grew up without a father, they often express sympathy. It’s true that I never had a dad to play catch with or teach me to fish, but I played catch with friends and learned to fish on my own. Actually, I found that growing up in a single parent family has several advantages.
The sense of opposition generated by this type of introduction creates tension, and in doing so, sharpens and dramatizes your ideas.
Raise a Question
Explanations often begin when we try to answer a question or solve a problem, and a thesis statement, especially in the early stages of writing, is often a tentative answer to a question that you want to explore. Why not share the question with your readers and invite them to join the search for an answer?
Like many people my age, I limit my cholesterol intake, but recently I’ve learned that some cholesterol can actually be healthy for me. What exactly is cholesterol, and what does it do? How can I tell whether the cholesterol in a salmon steak is good or bad for me? To maintain a healthy blood cholesterol level, we should all understand what this chemical compound is and how it works in the human body.
Make a Bold Assertion
Another way to say this might be: Go out on a limb. Take a risk. Of course, this approach can be overdone and can lead to exhibitionism and sensationalism, especially if you’re writing in a context that demands restraint and moderation. In those situations, this “Look, ma! No Hands!” approach could be a disaster.
The new fall television lineups are out, and they look like the same old trash: more violence, more insipid sitcoms, more hackneyed plots and one-dimensional characters. This is mind pollution, pure and simple. The American people deserve better programming from the major networks.
II. Conclusions
Although some writers find them difficult, conclusions need not be a problem, especially if you’ve been working toward a goal throughout your essay. As you near the end of your paper, you might ask a few basic questions. So what? What does all this finally have to do with anything, anyway? What do I most want my readers to take away from this essay? What do I hope they’ll do now that they’ve read this? What last thoughts do I want to imprint on their minds before we part company?
Often your instincts will tell you what needs to be said, worked through, and made clear at the end. If you remember that your conclusion should give finality and closure, you won’t open a new subject and leave readers hanging. If you recall that endings are always positions of great emphasis, you won’t leave your reader with a mere supporting fact from one of your sub points.
Keeping such principles in mind and also being careful not to repeat what you’ve already discussed, you should sense how best to end, and your reader should agree.
Strategies for Writing an Effective Conclusion
Play the “So What” Game. If you’re stuck and feel like your conclusion isn’t saying anything new or interesting, ask a friend to read it with you. Whenever you make a statement from your conclusion, ask the friend to say, “So what?” or “Why should anybody care?” Then ponder that question and answer it. Don’t be discouraged if you initially answer, “I don’t know.” Keep thinking. Your friend can help you by taking notes on your “so what” answers. It’s okay if you don’t have a good answer for every “So what?” — just keep trying to develop the significance of your work further. Here’s how it might go:
You: Essentially, I’m just saying that education was important to Frederick Douglass.
Friend: So what?
You: Well, it was important because it was a key to him feeling like a free and equal citizen.
Friend: Why should anybody care?
You: That’s important because plantation owners tried to keep slaves from being educated so that they could maintain control. When Douglass obtained an education, he undermined that control personally.
Friend: So what?
You: I guess the big point is that education was restricted by plantation owners as a way to keep slaves under their control. By rejecting that control and becoming educated, Douglass undermined racist assumptions about the intellectual abilities of slaves, seized control of a means to explore ideas and experiences outside the South, and affirmed to himself and the whites who tried to keep him enslaved that he had the capacity for and therefore the right to freedom.
You can also play this kind of game by yourself, asking yourself “So What?” as you develop your ideas or your draft. You can also consider how this topic might relate to everyday life.
You might think specifically about why your professor asked you to write this paper. Sometimes if you can figure out why your professor wanted you to write this particular paper, you will start to get a sense of the significance of the topic. That significance, in turn, can be a stepping stone to a useful conclusion.
You might try free-writing your conclusion in the form of a letter or e-mail to a friend or family member. In your letter, explain what you wrote about and then try to tell your friend what you learned as a result of writing the paper, how the ideas in the paper might relate to their experiences, or why the content of the paper matters in terms of “the big picture.”
How to Evaluate Your Conclusion Draft
You should write your introduction and conclusion after you’ve composed your draft. Next, read your introduction and your conclusion side by side. If they say essentially the same thing, you probably need to rethink your conclusion. It should do more than just restate your thesis—it should push the ideas further and explain their relevance.
Five BAD IDEAS for your Introduction[2]
1. The Place Holder Introduction. When you don’t have much to say on a given topic, it is easy to create this kind of introduction. Essentially, this kind of weaker introduction contains several sentences that are vague and don’t really say much. They exist just to take up the “introduction space” in your paper. If you had something more effective to say, you would probably say it, but in the meantime this paragraph is just a place holder.
Weak Example: Slavery was one of the greatest tragedies in American history. There were many different aspects of slavery. Each created different kinds of problems for enslaved people.
2. The Restated Question Introduction. Restating the question can be an effective strategy, but it can be easy to stop at JUST restating the question instead of offering a more effective, interesting introduction to your paper. The professor or teaching assistant wrote your questions and will be reading ten to seventy essays in response to them–they do not need to read a whole paragraph that simply restates the question. Try to do something more interesting.
Weak Example: Indeed, education has long been considered a major force for American social change, righting the wrongs of our society. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass discusses the relationship between education and slavery in 19th century America, showing how white control of education reinforced slavery and how Douglass and other enslaved African Americans viewed education while they endured. Moreover, the book discusses the role that education played in the acquisition of freedom. Education was a major force for social change with regard to slavery.
3. The Webster’s Dictionary Introduction. This introduction begins by giving the dictionary definition of one or more of the words in the assigned question. This introduction strategy is on the right track–if you write one of these, you may be trying to establish the important terms of the discussion, and this move builds a bridge to the reader by offering a common, agreed-upon definition for a key idea. You may also be looking for an authority that will lend credibility to your paper. However, anyone can look a word up in the dictionary and copy down what Webster says – it may be far more interesting for you (and your reader) if you develop your own definition of the term in the specific context of your class and assignment. Also recognize that the dictionary is also not a particularly authoritative work — it doesn’t take into account the context of your course and doesn’t offer particularly detailed information. If you feel that you must seek out an authority, try to find one that is very relevant and specific. Perhaps a quotation from a source reading might prove better? Dictionary introductions are also ineffective simply because they are so overused. Many graders will see twenty or more papers that begin in this way, greatly decreasing the dramatic impact that any one of those papers will have. You might find a more creative way to define your terms, or perhaps you could weave a definition into a more attention-grabbing introductory paragraph.
Weak Example: Webster’s dictionary defines slavery as “the state of being a slave,” as “the practice of owning slaves,” and as “a condition of hard work and subjection.”
4. The Dawn of Man Introduction. This kind of introduction generally makes broad sweeping statements about the relevance of this topic since the beginning of time. It is usually very general (similar to the place holder introduction) and fails to connect to the thesis. You may write this kind of introduction when you don’t have much to say–which is precisely why it is ineffective.
Weak Example: Since the dawn of man, slavery has been a problem in human history.
5. The Book Report Introduction. This introduction is what you had to do for your fifth-grade book reports. It gives the name and author of the book you are writing about, tells what the book is about, and offers other basic facts about the book. You might resort to this sort of introduction when you are trying to fill space because it’s a familiar, comfortable format. It is ineffective because it offers details that your reader already knows and that are irrelevant to the thesis.
Weak Example: Frederick Douglass wrote his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, in the 1840s. It was published in 1986 by Penguin Books. He tells the story of his life.
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Four BAD IDEAS for your Conclusion[3]
1. The “That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It” Conclusion
This conclusion just restates the thesis and is usually painfully short. It does not push the ideas forward in any way. People write this kind of conclusion when they just can’t think of anything else to say.
Bad Example: In conclusion, Frederick Douglass was, as we have seen, a pioneer in American education, proving that education was major force for social change with regard to slavery.
2. The “Sherlock Holmes” Conclusion
Sometimes, instead of repeating the thesis in the conclusion, writers will state the thesis for the very first time in the conclusion. You might be tempted to use this strategy if you feel like you don’t want to give everything away too early in your paper. You may think it would be more dramatic to keep the reader in the dark until the end and then “wow” them with your main idea, much like a Sherlock Holmes mystery. The reader, however, does not expect to read a mystery. Instead, he or she expects an analytical discussion of your topic in an academic style. As a result, your reader will expect to see an introduction that explains what the main argument (your thesis) will be followed by body paragraphs that explore evidence in support of that thesis and concluded with a section that summarizes and explains the significance of that argument. If you find that your conclusion is the first place where the reader fully understands your thesis, then you need to go back and revise.
Bad Example: (After a paper that lists numerous incidents from the book, but never tells the reader what those incidents reveal about Douglass and his views on education): So as the evidence above demonstrates, Douglass saw education as a means of subverting the authority of slaveholders and an important step toward freedom.
3.The “America the Beautiful”/”I Am Woman”/”We Shall Overcome” Conclusion
This kind of conclusion usually draws on emotion to make its appeal. You may be writing about a moving historical or sociological issue, the plight of disadvantaged communities, the environment, or other topics that pull the heart-strings so much that you can almost hear the strains of one of the above songs in the background as you read. While this sentimentality may be very heartfelt, it is usually out of character with the rest of an analytical paper. A more fitting tribute to the individual, theme, historical event, or other topic would certainly be a more sophisticated commentary than just emotional praise.
Bad Example: Because of the efforts of fine Americans like Frederick Douglass, countless others have seen the shining beacon of light that is education. His example was a torch that lit the way for others. Frederick Douglass was truly an American hero.
4. The Grab Bag Conclusion
In this kind of conclusion, the writer throws extra stuff that he or she found or thought of, but couldn’t integrate into the main paper. You may find it difficult to leave out insights or details that you discovered after hours of research and careful consideration but adding random bits of evidence and irrelevant facts at the end of an otherwise-well-organized essay can just create confusion.
Bad Example: In addition to being an educational pioneer, Frederick Douglass provides an interesting case study for masculinity in the American South. He also offers historians an intriguing glimpse into slave resistance when he confronts Covey the overseer. His relationships with female relatives reveal the importance of family in the slave community.
[1] Adapted from and inspired by Michael Gamer, Jack Lynch, and Michael Barsanti as well as “A Guide for Writing Research Papers” at Capital Community College, Hartford (http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/index.shtml) and the UNC Writing Center ( http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts ).
[2] Source: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/introductions.htm
[3] Source: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/conclusions.html