Model introduction

The best way to learn about writing introductions is to study examples.

Below is a short Governing Body report (HIV/AIDS and Employment) that offers some useful indicators of how a good introduction should work. Beneath the introduction, you can see the outline of the paper that follows.

The introduction is short and to the point. It has flow and reads as a piece of continuous text. It clusters parts of the report in a meaningful way to reveal the structure of the report. Unlike a summary or an overview, it does not give the specific conclusions or recommendations. However, because Governing Body reports tend not to have summaries, the report in this example does provide a very brief summary within the introduction.

An introduction is a contract between you and your readers. In it, you make specific commitments that must then be fulfilled. The most important of these is your statement about the purpose or focus of your report.

So, introductions in reports have three main functions:

• to make the purpose of the report clear;
• to explain the scope of the report: this is sometimes expressed as Terms of Reference (TORs) in formal reports;
• to provide the readers with a framework on which to build their understanding of the document: this is usually the last part of your introduction and serves as a transition to the body of the report.

Their lesser but still important functions are:

• to gain the reader's attention;
• to provide some background information;
• to indicate the authority under which the report is written (i.e., who requested the report).

In short, your introduction should provide your readers with whatever they need to prepare them to understand the information in your report, and act on your statement of purpose.

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