How to Write Better Essays

we have lost our freedom to choose. We may not be able to stop

progress, but we can still choose the type of progress we want.

Doing more with introductions in this way carries with it the danger of

obscuring the original intentions: to reveal the implications of the

question and outline the map of your answer. In this case it was wise

to split the introduction into two paragraphs to give us a chance of

making the structure clearer in the second paragraph. But there are no

hard and fast rules to this. Just keep in mind the simple structure on

which you are weaving these improvisations and avoid allowing the

introduction to become so long and complex that it obscures the simple

intent that lies behind it.

In the next chapter

The same advice applies equally to paragraphs. As we will see in the

next chapter, they, too, have a simple formula.

Note

1 Julie Lynch and Jennifer Ritterhouse, Writing at Harvard(Cambridge, Mass.:

Writing Center at Harvard University, 2000), Ch. 2, pp. 2–3.

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