Pay Special Attention to your Beginning and Ending
The beginning of your paper, or the lead as journalists refer to it, is like a personal greeting; it attracts and holds the reader’s attention.
You might consider using one of the following beginnings:
- An incident, anecdote, or illustration
- Historical background
- A quotation
- A broad, general thesis statement
- A contradictory or ironic statement
- A surprising fact or idea
- A statement
- A rhetorical question
No matter how you attract your reader’s attention, however, your introduction should clearly relate to your thesis. For this reason, even though the temptation is to get it just right from the outset so you feel you are off to a good start, you may find it best to draft a workable beginning and then revise it after you have written and revised the body of your composition. When the body is in final form, you may have a better idea how to introduce it to your readers.
A good conclusion does more than indicate the end of your composition. You may use it to inspire your reader to some action or new way of thinking about a subject, or you may want to drive home a point you made in your lead by giving another particularly apt example or by repeating a key word or phrase to remind the reader of where you began your composition. You may also use your conclusion to summarize what you have written, but never in a mechanical way and not with such expressions as in summary, in conclusion, or as you can see.
As with beginnings, there are no rules to tell you how to conclude, but there is this simple principle: your conclusion should be a natural outgrowth of what you have said, appropriate to your subject, thesis, purpose, and audience.
See the essays on pages 1-2 and 29-32 for examples of good beginnings and endings.
