Academic Writing World

Simple Tips For Writing A Good Introduction For A Research Paper

What to include in your paper

Writing a paper can sometimes prove to be more difficult than doing the actual research. Bigger and broader your topic of research, the more you need to plan. Before you do anything, you need to make an outline for your paper. The outline enumerates what you need to include in your paper and in which order. You can put down a word limit with each subpart of your paper as well. When this is done, you can move on to the introduction.

People often confuse an abstract with an introduction. They are not the same.

  • An abstract explains the work you have done in a concise manner. The introduction puts down the importance of the topic you choose, the relevancy of it and other such things.
  • An abstract has a strict word limit. Introduction does not have any word limit, but it is wise to keep it short.
  • The abstract appears in the synopsis but the introduction does not. Also, in the research paper, the abstract appears before the introduction.

The basic format of an introduction of a research paper

There are a few things that you must include in the introduction. The introduction should put your topic into a broader context and make it eminent that this research is essential. It must describe your approach in an interesting manner so that the reader would go into the depth of your work. Although for bigger papers, you can write a long introduction, but it is better to keep it short and simple. Just cover the basics and leave the details out.

There are some things that should not be included into the introduction of your research paper as well.

  • Do not write something that is already known to everyone. For example, if you are writing on computers, you do not need to write things like processors are the brain of the computer and so on.
  • Do not include details of your research. Do not write details about your approach or method. Do not write about the results and observations.
  • Write about the limitations, but never highlight them. You should mention the drawbacks of your method or approach, but keep it in mind that it should not become the center of the reader’s attraction.
  • Make sure there are not too many assumptions on which the whole idea is based. You must mention them, however, in the introduction.
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