Effective Introductions

1. Effective Introductions • Draws readers into your world • Establishes the significance of the subject and provides background • Specifies topic and implies your attitude • Provides the thesis • Remains concise and sincere

2. Reaching into vague generalities • “Throughout human history, people have wanted three things: a spouse, children, and a house.” • Announcing intentions needlessly • “The purpose of this essay is to show the reader why people think that I am such a bad writer, because I announce my intentions needlessly.” • Beginning the introduction with a definition • “According to the tenth edition of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of “boring” is the introduction I am writing now.” • Apologizing for an opinion • “I am not sure if my assessment is correct, but I suspect that I may be boring my instructor to death with my silly apologies for my opinions in this paper.” Introductions to Avoid

3. The MOST IMPORTANT SENTENCE in your paper. • Lets the reader know the main idea of the paper. • Answers the question: “What am I trying to prove?” • Not a factual statement, but a claim that has to be proventhroughout the paper. • What is a thesis statement?

4. Functions of the Thesis Statement • It narrows your subject to single, central idea that you want readers to gain from your essay. • It names the topic and asserts something specific and significant about it. • • It conveys your reason for writing, your purpose. • It often provides a concise preview of how you will arrange your • ideas in the essay.

5. Thesis Statements Very Concise (Courtroom) Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: My client is not guilty of the crime alleged by the prosecution. He had neither the means, the motive, nor the opportunity to commit this crime. Let me review for you—from evidence submitted in this trial—why none of these three factors were present in this case. Very Concise (Foreign Affairs) Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. But in fact, it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization, and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come. Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often the least bad answer. Very Concise (Book Review) Although these informal local terrorist groups are certainly a critical part of the global terrorist network, Leaderless Jihad's salient weakness is its insistence that this dimension represents the entire threat facing the United States today. This shortcoming can largely be explained by Sageman's brusque dismissal of much of the existing academic literature on terrorism in general and terrorist networks in particular.

6. Thesis Statements Very Concise (Foreign Affairs) The United States' unipolar moment is over. International relations in the twenty-first century will be defined by nonpolarity.Power will be diffuse rather than concentrated, and the influence of nation-states will decline as that of nonstate actors increases. But this is not all bad news for the United States; Washington can still manage the transition and make the world a safer place. Concise (Same article as above) The principal characteristic of twenty-first-century international relations is turning out to be nonpolarity: a world dominated not by one or two or even several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power. This represents a tectonic shift from the past. The twentieth century started out distinctly multipolar. But after almost 50 years, two world wars, and many smaller conflicts, a bipolar system emerged. Then, with the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, bipolarity gave way to unipolarity -- an international system dominated by one power, in this case the United States. But today power is diffuse, and the onset of nonpolarity raises a number of important questions. How does nonpolarity differ from other forms of international order? How and why did it materialize? What are its likely consequences? And how should the United States respond?

7. Thesis Statements Very Concise (NYT Op-Ed) Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country. When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit…:“Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.” Very Concise (Military Review) Our current operational doctrines display a serious blind spot with regard to the issue of conflict termination. The argument offered here is simple and straightforward: war termination deserves equal billing with other aspects of the campaign planning process and should be guided by a set of principles or guidelines which, like other dimensions of that process, are best considered in the earliest stages. Existing strategic theory, leavened by the empiricism of historical example, provides clues to those guidelines on conflict termination that should become part of our operational art and doctrine.

8. Closing paragraphs: Strategies • Strike a note of hope or despair. • Use a quotation. • Recommend a course of action. • Give a symbolic or powerful fact or other detail. • Summarize the paper.

9. Closing paragraphs: Strategies • Give an especially compelling example • Echo the approach of the introduction • Create a visual image that represents your subject • Restate your thesis and reflect on its implications

10. Closings to avoid • Don't simply restate your introduction-statement of subject, thesis sentence, and all. • Presumably the paragraphs in the body of your essay have contributed something to the opening statements, and it's that something you want to capture in your conclusion.

11. Closings to avoid • Don't start off in a new direction, with a subject different from the one your essay has been about. If you arrive at a new idea, this may be a signal to start fresh with that idea as your thesis. • Don't conclude more than you reasonably can from the evidence you have presented. • If your essay is about your frustrating experience trying to clear a parking ticket, you cannot reasonably conclude that all local police forces are tied up in red tape.

12. Closings to avoid • Don't apologize for your essay or otherwise cast doubt on it. Don't say, "Even though I'm no expert," or "This may not be convincing, but I believe it's true,” or anything similar. Rather, to win your readers' confidence, display confidence.