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How to Start a College Essay Perfectly

College Essays

If you've been sitting in front of a blank screen, unsure of exactly how to start a personal statement for college, then believe me—I feel your pain. A great college essay introduction is key to making your essay stand out, so there's a lot of pressure to get it right.

Luckily, being able to craft the perfect beginning for your admissions essay is just like many other writing skills— something you can get better at with practice and by learning from examples.

In this article, I'll walk you through exactly how to start a college essay. We'll cover what makes a great personal statement introduction and how the first part of your essay should be structured. We'll also look at several great examples of essay beginnings and explain why they work, how they work, and what you can learn from them.

What Is the College Essay Introduction For?

Before we talk about how to start a college essay, let's discuss the role of the introduction. Just as your college essay is your chance to introduce yourself to the admissions office of your target college, your essay's beginning is your chance to introduce your writing.

Wait, Back Up—Why Do Colleges Want Personal Statements?

In general, college essays make it easier to get to know the parts of you not in your transcript —these include your personality, outlook on life, passions, and experiences.

You're not writing for yourself but for a very specific kind of reader. Picture it: your audience is an admissions officer who has read thousands and thousands of essays. This person is disposed to be friendly and curious, but if she hasn't already seen it all she's probably seen a good portion of it.

Your essay's job is to entertain and impress this person, and to make you memorable so you don't merely blend into the sea of other personal statements. Like all attempts at charm, you must be slightly bold and out of the ordinary—but you must also stay away from crossing the line into offensiveness or bad taste.

What Role Does the Introduction Play in a College Essay?

The personal statement introduction is basically the wriggly worm that baits the hook to catch your reader. It's vital to grab attention from the get-go—the more awake and eager your audience is, the more likely it is that what you say will really land.

How do you go about crafting an introduction that successfully hooks your reader? Let's talk about how to structure the beginning of your college essay.

How to Structure a Personal Statement Introduction

To see how the introduction fits into an essay, let's look at the big structural picture first and then zoom in.

College Essay Structure Overview

Even though they're called essays, personal statements are really more like a mix of a short story and a philosophy or psychology class that's all about you.

Usually, how this translates is that you start with a really good (and very short) story about something arresting, unusual, or important that happened to you. This is not to say that the story has to be about something important or unusual in the grand scheme of things—it just has to be a moment that stands out to you as defining in some way, or an explanation of why you are the way you are . You then pivot to an explanation of why this story is an accurate illustration of one of your core qualities, values, or beliefs.

The story typically comes in the first half of the essay, and the insightful explanation comes second —but, of course, all rules were made to be broken, and some great essays flip this more traditional order.

College Essay Introduction Components

Now, let's zero in on the first part of the college essay. What are the ingredients of a great personal statement introduction? I'll list them here and then dissect them one by one in the next section:

• A killer first sentence: This hook grabs your readers' attention and whets their appetite for your story.
• A vivid, detailed story that illustrates your eventual insight: To make up for how short your story will be, you must insert effective sensory information to immerse the reader.
• An insightful pivot toward the greater point you're making in your essay: This vital piece of the essay connects the short story part to the part where you explain what the experience has taught you about yourself, how you've matured, and how it has ultimately shaped you as a person.

How to Write a College Essay Introduction

Here's a weird secret that's true for most written work: just because it'll end up at the beginning doesn't mean you have to write it first. For example, in this case, you can't know what your killer first sentence will be until you've figured out the following details:

• The story you want to tell
• The point you want that story to make
• The trait/maturity level/background about you that your essay will reveal

So my suggestion is to work in reverse order! Writing your essay will be much easier if you can figure out the entirety of it first and then go back and work out exactly how it should start.

This means that before you can craft your ideal first sentence, the way the short story experience of your life will play out on the page, and the perfect pivoting moment that transitions from your story to your insight, you must work out a general idea about which life event you will share and what you expect that life event to demonstrate to the reader about you and the kind of person you are.

If you're having trouble coming up with a topic, check out our guide on brainstorming college essay ideas . It might also be helpful to read our guides to specific application essays, such as picking your best Common App prompt and writing a perfect University of California personal statement .

In the next sections of this article, I'll talk about how to work backwards on the introduction, moving from bigger to smaller elements: starting with the first section of the essay in general and then honing your pivot sentence and your first sentence.

How to Write the First Section of Your College Essay

In a 500-word essay, this section will take up about the first half of the essay and will mostly consist of a brief story that illuminates a key experience, an important character trait, a moment of transition or transformation, or a step toward maturity.

Once you've figured out your topic and zeroed in on the experience you want to highlight in the beginning of your essay, here are 2 great approaches to making it into a story:

• Talking it out, storyteller style (while recording yourself): Imagine that you're sitting with a group of people at a campfire, or that you're stuck on a long flight sitting next to someone you want to befriend. Now tell that story. What does someone who doesn't know you need to know in order for the story to make sense? What details do you need to provide to put them in the story with you? What background information do they need in order to understand the stakes or importance of the story?
• Record yourself telling your story to friends and then chatting about it: What do they need clarified? What questions do they have? Which parts of your story didn't make sense or follow logically for them? Do they want to know more, or less? Is part of your story interesting to them but not interesting to you? Is a piece of your story secretly boring, even though you think it's interesting?

Later, as you listen to the recorded story to try to get a sense of how to write it, you can also get a sense of the tone with which you want to tell your story. Are you being funny as you talk? Sad? Trying to shock, surprise, or astound your audience? The way you most naturally tell your story is the way you should write it.

After you've done this storyteller exercise, write down the salient points of what you learned. What is the story your essay will tell? What is the point about your life, point of view, or personality it will make? What tone will you tell it with? Sketch out a detailed outline so that you can start filling in the pieces as we work through how to write the introductory sections.

How to Write the First Sentence of Your College Essay

In general, your essay's first sentence should be either a mini-cliffhanger that sets up a situation the reader would like to see resolved, or really lush scene-setting that situates your audience in a place and time they can readily visualize. The former builds expectations and evokes curiosity, and the latter stimulates the imagination and creates a connection with the author. In both cases, you hit your goal of greater reader engagement.

Now, I'm going to show you how these principles work for all types of first sentences, whether in college essays or in famous works of fiction.

First Sentence Idea 1: Line of Quoted Direct Speech

"Mum, I'm gay." ( Ahmad Ashraf '17 for Connecticut College )

The experience of coming out is raw and emotional, and the issue of LGBTQ rights is an important facet of modern life. This three-word sentence immediately sums up an enormous background of the personal and political.

"You can handle it, Matt," said Mr. Wolf, my fourth-grade band teacher, as he lifted the heavy tuba and put it into my arms. ( Matt Coppo '07 for Hamilton College )

This sentence conjures up a funny image—we can immediately picture the larger adult standing next to a little kid holding a giant tuba. It also does a little play on words: "handle it" can refer to both the literal tuba Matt is being asked to hold and the figurative stress of playing the instrument.

First Sentence Idea 2: Punchy Short Sentence With One Grabby Detail

I live alone—I always have since elementary school. ( Kevin Zevallos '16 for Connecticut College )

This opener definitely makes us want to know more. Why was he alone? Where were the protective grown-ups who surround most kids? How on earth could a little kid of 8-10 years old survive on his own?

I have old hands. ( First line from a student in Stanford's class of 2012 )

There's nothing but questions here. What are "old" hands? Are they old-looking? Arthritic? How has having these hands affected the author?

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. (Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre )

There's immediately a feeling of disappointment and the stifled desire for action here. Who wanted to go for a walk? And why was this person being prevented from going?

First Sentence Idea 3: Lyrical, Adjective-Rich Description of a Setting

We met for lunch at El Burrito Mexicano, a tiny Mexican lunch counter under the Red Line "El" tracks. ( Ted Mullin '06 for Carleton College )

Look at how much specificity this sentence packs in less than 20 words. Each noun and adjective is chosen for its ability to convey yet another detail. "Tiny" instead of "small" gives readers a sense of being uncomfortably close to other people and sitting at tables that don't quite have enough room for the plates. "Counter" instead of "restaurant" lets us immediately picture this work surface, the server standing behind it, and the general atmosphere. "Under the tracks" is a location deeply associated with being run down, borderline seedy, and maybe even dangerous.

Maybe it's because I live in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where Brett Favre draws more of a crowd on Sunday than any religious service, cheese is a staple food, it's sub-zero during global warming, current "fashions" come three years after they've hit it big with the rest of the world, and where all children by the age of ten can use a 12-gauge like it's their job. ( Riley Smith '12 for Hamilton College )

This sentence manages to hit every stereotype about Wisconsin held by outsiders—football, cheese, polar winters, backwardness, and guns—and this piling on gives us a good sense of place while also creating enough hyperbole to be funny. At the same time, the sentence raises the tantalizing question: maybe what is because of Wisconsin?

High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. (David Lodge, Changing Places )

This sentence is structured in the highly specific style of a math problem, which makes it funny. However, at the heart of this sentence lies a mystery that grabs the reader's interest: why on earth would these two people be doing this?

First Sentence Idea 4: Counterintuitive Statement

To avoid falling into generalities with this one, make sure you're really creating an argument or debate with your counterintuitive sentence. If no one would argue with what you've said, then you aren't making an argument. ("The world is a wonderful place" and "Life is worth living" don't make the cut.)

If string theory is really true, then the entire world is made up of strings, and I cannot tie a single one. ( Joanna '18 for Johns Hopkins University )

There's a great switch here from the sub-microscopic strings that make up string theory to the actual physical strings you can tie in real life. This sentence hints that the rest of the essay will continue playing with linked, albeit not typically connected, concepts.

All children, except one, grow up. (J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan )

In just six words, this sentence upends everything we think we know about what happens to human beings.

First Sentence Idea 5: The End—Making the Rest of the Essay a Flashback

I've recently come to the realization that community service just isn't for me. ( Kyla '19 for Johns Hopkins University )

This seems pretty bold—aren't we supposed to be super into community service? Is this person about to declare herself to be totally selfish and uncaring about the less fortunate? We want to know the story that would lead someone to this kind of conclusion.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. (Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude )

So many amazing details here. Why is the Colonel being executed? What does "discovering" ice entail? How does he go from ice-discoverer to military commander of some sort to someone condemned to capital punishment?

First Sentence Idea 6: Direct Question to the Reader

To work well, your question should be especially specific, come out of left field, or pose a surprising hypothetical.

How does an agnostic Jew living in the Diaspora connect to Israel? ( Essay #3 from Carleton College's sample essays )

This is a thorny opening, raising questions about the difference between being an ethnic Jew and practicing the religion of Judaism, and the obligations of Jews who live outside of Israel to those who live in Israel and vice versa. There's a lot of meat to this question, setting up a philosophically interesting, politically important, and personally meaningful essay.

While traveling through the daily path of life, have you ever stumbled upon a hidden pocket of the universe? ( First line from a student in Stanford's class of 2012 )

There's a dreamy and sci-fi element to this first sentence, as it tries to find the sublime ("the universe") inside the prosaic ("daily path of life").

First Sentence Idea 7: Lesson You Learned From the Story You're Telling

One way to think about how to do this kind of opening sentence well is to model it on the morals that ended each Aesop's fable . The lesson you learned should be slightly surprising (not necessarily intuitive) and something that someone else might disagree with.

Perhaps it wasn't wise to chew and swallow a handful of sand the day I was given my first sandbox, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. ( Meagan Spooner '07 for Hamilton College )

The best part of this hilarious sentence is that even in retrospect, eating a handful of sand is only possibly an unwise idea—a qualifier achieved through that great "perhaps." So does that mean it was wise in at least some way to eat the sand? The reader wants to know more.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina )

This immediately sets readers to mentally flip through every unhappy family they've ever known to double-check the narrator's assertion. Did he draw the right conclusion here? How did he come to this realization? The implication that he will tell us all about some dysfunctional drama also has a rubbernecking draw.

How to Write a Pivot Sentence in Your College Essay

This is the place in your essay where you go from small to big—from the life experience you describe in detail to the bigger point this experience illustrates about your world and yourself.

Typically, the pivot sentence will come at the end of your introductory section, about halfway through the essay. I say sentence, but this section could be more than one sentence (though ideally no longer than two or three).

So how do you make the turn? Usually you indicate in your pivot sentence itself that you are moving from one part of the essay to another. This is called signposting, and it's a great way to keep readers updated on where they are in the flow of the essay and your argument.

Here are three ways to do this, with real-life examples from college essays published by colleges.

Pivot Idea 1: Expand the Time Frame

In this pivot, you gesture out from the specific experience you describe to the overarching realization you had during it. Think of helper phrases such as "that was the moment I realized" and "never again would I."

Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation. ( Stephen '19 for Johns Hopkins University )

This is a pretty great pivot, neatly connecting the story Stephen's been telling (about having to break into a car on a volunteering trip) and his general reliance on his own resourcefulness and ability to roll with whatever life throws at him. It's a double bonus that he accomplishes the pivot with a play on the word "click," which here means both the literal clicking of the car door latch and the figurative clicking his brain does. Note also how the pivot crystallizes the moment of epiphany through the word "suddenly," which implies instant insight.

But in that moment I realized that the self-deprecating jokes were there for a reason. When attempting to climb the mountain of comedic success, I didn't just fall and then continue on my journey, but I fell so many times that I befriended the ground and realized that the middle of the metaphorical mountain made for a better campsite. Not because I had let my failures get the best of me, but because I had learned to make the best of my failures. (Rachel Schwartzbaum '19 for Connecticut College)

This pivot similarly focuses on a "that moment" of illuminated clarity. In this case, it broadens Rachel's experience of stage fright before her standup comedy sets to the way she has more generally not allowed failures to stop her progress—and has instead been able to use them as learning experiences. Not only does she describe her humor as "self-deprecating," but she also demonstrates what she means with that great "befriended the ground" line.

It was on this first educational assignment that I realized how much could be accomplished through an animal education program—more, in some cases, than the aggregate efforts of all of the rehabilitators. I found that I had been naive in my assumption that most people knew as much about wildlife as I did, and that they shared my respect for animals. ( J.P. Maloney '07 for Hamilton College )

This is another classically constructed pivot, as J.P. segues from his negative expectations about using a rehabilitated wild owl as an educational animal to his understanding of how much this kind of education could contribute to forming future environmentalists and nature lovers. The widening of scope happens at once as we go from a highly specific "first educational assignment" to the more general realization that "much" could be accomplished through these kinds of programs.

Pivot Idea 2: Link the Described Experience With Others

In this pivot, you draw a parallel between the life event that you've been describing in your very short story and other events that were similar in some significant way. Helpful phrases include "now I see how x is really just one of the many x 's I have faced," "in a way, x is a good example of the x -like situations I see daily," and "and from then on every time I ..."

This state of discovery is something I strive for on a daily basis. My goal is to make all the ideas in my mind fit together like the gears of a Swiss watch. Whether it's learning a new concept in linear algebra, talking to someone about a programming problem, or simply zoning out while I read, there is always some part of my day that pushes me towards this place of cohesion: an idea that binds together some set of the unsolved mysteries in my mind. ( Aubrey Anderson '19 for Tufts University )

After cataloging and detailing the many interesting thoughts that flow through her brain in a specific hour, Aubrey uses the pivot to explain that this is what every waking hour is like for her "on a daily basis." She loves learning different things and finds a variety of fields fascinating. And her pivot lets us know that her example is a demonstration of how her mind works generally.

This was the first time I've been to New Mexico since he died. Our return brought so much back for me. I remembered all the times we'd visited when I was younger, certain events highlighted by the things we did: Dad haggling with the jewelry sellers, his minute examination of pots at a trading post, the affection he had for chilies. I was scared that my love for the place would be tainted by his death, diminished without him there as my guide. That fear was part of what kept my mother and me away for so long. Once there, though, I was relieved to realize that Albuquerque still brings me closer to my father. ( Essay #1 from Carleton College's sample essays )

In this pivot, one very painful experience of visiting a place filled with sorrowful memories is used as a way to think about "all the other times" the author had been to New Mexico. The previously described trip after the father's death pivots into a sense of the continuity of memory. Even though he is no longer there to "guide," the author's love for the place itself remains.

Pivot Idea 3: Extract and Underline a Trait or Value

In this type of pivot, you use the experience you've described to demonstrate its importance in developing or zooming in on one key attribute. Here are some ways to think about making this transition: "I could not have done it without characteristic y , which has helped me through many other difficult moments," or "this is how I came to appreciate the importance of value z, both in myself and in those around me."

My true reward of having Stanley is that he opened the door to the world of botany. I would never have invested so much time learning about the molecular structure or chemical balance of plants if not for taking care of him. ( Michaela '19 for Johns Hopkins University )

In this tongue-in-cheek essay in which Michaela writes about Stanley, a beloved cactus, as if "he" has human qualities and is her child, the pivot explains what makes this plant so meaningful to its owner. Without having to "take care of him," Michaela "would never have invested so much time learning" about plant biology. She has a deep affinity for the natural sciences and attributes her interest at least partly to her cactus.

By leaving me free to make mistakes and chase wild dreams, my father was always able to help ground me back in reality. Personal responsibilities, priorities and commitments are all values that are etched into my mind, just as they are within my father's. ( Olivia Rabbitt '16 for Connecticut College )

In Olivia's essay about her father's role in her life, the pivot discusses his importance by explaining his deep impact on her values. Olivia has spent the story part of her essay describing her father's background and their relationship. Now, she is free to show how without his influence, she would not be so strongly committed to "personal responsibilities, priorities and commitments."

College Essay Introduction Examples

We've collected many examples of college essays published by colleges and offered a breakdown of how several of them are put together . Now, let's check out a couple of examples of actual college essay beginnings to show you how and why they work.

Sample Intro 1

A blue seventh place athletic ribbon hangs from my mantel. Every day, as I walk into my living room, the award mockingly congratulates me as I smile. Ironically, the blue seventh place ribbon resembles the first place ribbon in color; so, if I just cover up the tip of the seven, I may convince myself that I championed the fourth heat. But, I never dare to wipe away the memory of my seventh place swim; I need that daily reminder of my imperfection. I need that seventh place.

Two years ago, I joined the no-cut swim team. That winter, my coach unexpectedly assigned me to swim the 500 freestyle. After stressing for hours about swimming 20 laps in a competition, I mounted the blocks, took my mark, and swam. Around lap 14, I looked around at the other lanes and did not see anyone. "I must be winning!" I thought to myself. However, as I finally completed my race and lifted my arms up in victory to the eager applause of the fans, I looked up at the score board. I had finished my race in last place. In fact, I left the pool two minutes after the second-to-last competitor, who now stood with her friends, wearing all her clothes.

(From "The Unathletic Department" by Meghan '17 for Johns Hopkins University )

Why Intro Sample 1 Works

Here are some of the main reasons that this essay's introduction is super effective.

#1: It's Got a Great First Sentence

The sentence is short but still does some scene setting with the descriptive "blue" and the location "from my mantel." It introduces a funny element with "seventh place"—why would that bad of a showing even get a ribbon? It dangles information just out of reach, making the reader want to know more: what was this an award for? Why does this definitively non-winning ribbon hang in such a prominent place of pride?

#2: It Has Lots of Detail

In the intro, we get physical actions: "cover up the tip," "mounted the blocks," "looked around at the other lanes," "lifted my arms up," and "stood with her friends, wearing all her clothes." We also get words conveying emotion: "mockingly congratulates me as I smile," "unexpectedly assigned," and "stressing for hours." Finally, we get descriptive specificity in the precise word choice: "from my mantel" and "my living room" instead of simply "in my house," and "lap 14" instead of "toward the end of the race."

#3: It Explains the Stakes

Even though everyone can imagine the lap pool, not everyone knows exactly what the "500 freestyle" race is. Meghan elegantly explains the difficulty by describing herself freaking out over "swimming 20 laps in a competition," which helps us to picture the swimmer going back and forth many times.

#4: It Has Great Storytelling

We basically get a sports commentary play-by-play here. Even though we already know the conclusion—Meghan came in 7th—she still builds suspense by narrating the race from her point of view as she was swimming it. She's nervous for a while, and then she starts the race.

Close to the end, she starts to think everything is going well ("I looked around at the other lanes and did not see anyone. 'I must be winning!' I thought to myself."). Everything builds to an expected moment of great triumph ("I finally completed my race and lifted my arms up in victory to the eager applause of the fans") but ends in total defeat ("I had finished my race in last place").

Not only that, but the mildly clichéd sports hype is hilariously undercut by reality ("I left the pool two minutes after the second-to-last competitor, who now stood with her friends, wearing all her clothes").

#5: It Uses a Pivot Sentence

This essay uses the time expansion method of pivoting: "But, I never dare to wipe away the memory of my seventh place swim; I need that daily reminder of my imperfection. I need that seventh place." Coming last in the race was something that happened once, but the award is now an everyday experience of humility.

The rest of the essay explores what it means for Meghan to constantly see this reminder of failure and to transform it into a sense of acceptance of her imperfections. Notice also that in this essay, the pivot comes before the main story, helping us "hear" the narrative in the way she wants us to.

Sample Intro 2

"Biogeochemical. It's a word, I promise!" There are shrieks and shouts in protest and support. Unacceptable insults are thrown, degrees and qualifications are questioned, I think even a piece of my grandmother's famously flakey parantha whizzes past my ear. Everyone is too lazy to take out a dictionary (or even their phones) to look it up, so we just hash it out. And then, I am crowned the victor, a true success in the Merchant household. But it is fleeting, as the small, glossy, plastic tiles, perfectly connected to form my winning word, are snatched out from under me and thrown in a pile with all the disgraced, "unwinning" tiles as we mix for our next game of Bananagrams. It's a similar donnybrook, this time ending with my father arguing that it is okay to use "Rambo" as a word (it totally is not).

Words and communicating have always been of tremendous importance in my life: from silly games like Bananagrams and our road-trip favorite "word game," to stunted communication between opposing grandparents, each speaking a different Indian language; from trying to understand the cheesemonger behind the counter with a deep southern drawl (I just want some Camembert!), to shaping a script to make people laugh.

Words are moving and changing; they have influence and substance.

From an Essay by Shaan Merchant ‘19 for Tufts University

Why Intro Sample 2 Works

Let's take a look at what qualities make this essay's introduction particularly memorable.

With the first sentence, we are immediately thrust into the middle of the action —into an exciting part of an argument about whether "biogeochemical" is really a word. We're also immediately challenged. Is this a word? Have I ever heard it before? Does a scientific neologism count as a word?

#2: It Shows Rather Than Tells

Since the whole essay is going to be about words, it makes sense for Shaan to demonstrate his comfort with all different kinds of language:

• Complex, elevated vocabulary, such as "biogeochemical" and "donnybrook"
• Foreign words, such as "parantha" and "Camembert"
• Colorful descriptive words, such as "shrieks and shouts," "famously flakey, "whizzes past," and "hash it out"
• "Fake" words, such as "unwinning" and "Rambo"

What's great is that Shaan is able to seamlessly mix the different tones and registers these words imply, going from cerebral to funny and back again.

#3: It Uses a Pivot Sentence

This essay uses the value-extraction style of pivot: "Words and communicating have always been of tremendous importance in my life." After we see an experience linking Shaan's clear love of his family with an interest in word games, he clarifies that this is exactly what the essay will be about—using a very straightforward pivoting sentence.

#4: It Piles On Examples to Avoid Vagueness

The danger of this kind of pivot sentence is slipping into vague, uninformative statements, such as "I love words." To avoid making a generalization the tells us nothing, the essay builds a list of examples of times when Shaan saw the way that words connect people: games ("Bananagrams and our road-trip favorite ‘word game,'"), his mixed-language family ("grandparents, each speaking a different Indian language"), encounters with strangers ("from trying to understand the cheesemonger"), and finally the more active experience of performing ("shaping a script to make people laugh").

But the essay stops short of giving so many examples that the reader drowns. I'd say three to five examples is a good range—as long as they're all different kinds of the same thing.

The Bottom Line: How to Start a College Essay

The college essay introduction should hook your reader and make her want to know more and read more.

Good personal statement introductions will contain the following features:

• A killer first line
• A detailed description of an experience from your life
• A pivot to the bigger picture, in which you explain why and how this experience has shaped you, your point of view, and/or your values.

You don't have to write the introduction first, and you certainly don't have to write your first sentence first . Instead, start by developing your story by telling it out loud to a friend. You can then work on your first sentence and your pivot.

The first sentence should either be short, punchy, and carry some ambiguity or questions, or be a detailed and beautiful description setting an easily pictured scene. The pivot, on the other hand, should answer the question, "How does the story you've told connect to a larger truth or insight about you?"

What's Next?

Wondering what to make of the Common Application essay prompts? We have the complete list of this year's Common App prompts with explanations of what each is asking as well as a guide to picking the Common App prompt that's perfect for you .

Thinking of applying to the University of California system? Check out our detailed guide on how to approach their essay prompts and craft your ideal UC essay .

If you're in the middle of the essay-writing process, you'll want to see our suggestions on what essay pitfalls to avoid .

Working on the rest of your college application? Read what admissions officers wish applicants knew before applying .

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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How to Write an Essay Introduction (with Examples)   

The introduction of an essay plays a critical role in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. It sets the stage for the rest of the essay, establishes the tone and style, and motivates the reader to continue reading. 

Table of Contents

What is an essay introduction , what to include in an essay introduction, how to create an essay structure , step-by-step process for writing an essay introduction , how to write an introduction paragraph , how to write a hook for your essay , how to include background information , how to write a thesis statement .

• Argumentative Essay Introduction Example: 
• Expository Essay Introduction Example 

Literary Analysis Essay Introduction Example

Check and revise – checklist for essay introduction , key takeaways , frequently asked questions .

An introduction is the opening section of an essay, paper, or other written work. It introduces the topic and provides background information, context, and an overview of what the reader can expect from the rest of the work. 1 The key is to be concise and to the point, providing enough information to engage the reader without delving into excessive detail. 

The essay introduction is crucial as it sets the tone for the entire piece and provides the reader with a roadmap of what to expect. Here are key elements to include in your essay introduction: 

• Hook : Start with an attention-grabbing statement or question to engage the reader. This could be a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or a compelling anecdote. 
• Background information : Provide context and background information to help the reader understand the topic. This can include historical information, definitions of key terms, or an overview of the current state of affairs related to your topic. 
• Thesis statement : Clearly state your main argument or position on the topic. Your thesis should be concise and specific, providing a clear direction for your essay. 

Before we get into how to write an essay introduction, we need to know how it is structured. The structure of an essay is crucial for organizing your thoughts and presenting them clearly and logically. It is divided as follows: 2  

• Introduction:  The introduction should grab the reader’s attention with a hook, provide context, and include a thesis statement that presents the main argument or purpose of the essay.  
• Body:  The body should consist of focused paragraphs that support your thesis statement using evidence and analysis. Each paragraph should concentrate on a single central idea or argument and provide evidence, examples, or analysis to back it up.  
• Conclusion:  The conclusion should summarize the main points and restate the thesis differently. End with a final statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. Avoid new information or arguments. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to write an essay introduction: 

• Start with a Hook : Begin your introduction paragraph with an attention-grabbing statement, question, quote, or anecdote related to your topic. The hook should pique the reader’s interest and encourage them to continue reading. 
• Provide Background Information : This helps the reader understand the relevance and importance of the topic. 
• State Your Thesis Statement : The last sentence is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be clear, concise, and directly address the topic of your essay. 
• Preview the Main Points : This gives the reader an idea of what to expect and how you will support your thesis. 
• Keep it Concise and Clear : Avoid going into too much detail or including information not directly relevant to your topic. 
• Revise : Revise your introduction after you’ve written the rest of your essay to ensure it aligns with your final argument. 

Here’s an example of an essay introduction paragraph about the importance of education: 

Education is often viewed as a fundamental human right and a key social and economic development driver. As Nelson Mandela once famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” It is the key to unlocking a wide range of opportunities and benefits for individuals, societies, and nations. In today’s constantly evolving world, education has become even more critical. It has expanded beyond traditional classroom learning to include digital and remote learning, making education more accessible and convenient. This essay will delve into the importance of education in empowering individuals to achieve their dreams, improving societies by promoting social justice and equality, and driving economic growth by developing a skilled workforce and promoting innovation. 

This introduction paragraph example includes a hook (the quote by Nelson Mandela), provides some background information on education, and states the thesis statement (the importance of education). 

This is one of the key steps in how to write an essay introduction. Crafting a compelling hook is vital because it sets the tone for your entire essay and determines whether your readers will stay interested. A good hook draws the reader in and sets the stage for the rest of your essay.  

• Avoid Dry Fact : Instead of simply stating a bland fact, try to make it engaging and relevant to your topic. For example, if you’re writing about the benefits of exercise, you could start with a startling statistic like, “Did you know that regular exercise can increase your lifespan by up to seven years?” 
• Avoid Using a Dictionary Definition : While definitions can be informative, they’re not always the most captivating way to start an essay. Instead, try to use a quote, anecdote, or provocative question to pique the reader’s interest. For instance, if you’re writing about freedom, you could begin with a quote from a famous freedom fighter or philosopher. 
• Do Not Just State a Fact That the Reader Already Knows : This ties back to the first point—your hook should surprise or intrigue the reader. For Here’s an introduction paragraph example, if you’re writing about climate change, you could start with a thought-provoking statement like, “Despite overwhelming evidence, many people still refuse to believe in the reality of climate change.” 

Including background information in the introduction section of your essay is important to provide context and establish the relevance of your topic. When writing the background information, you can follow these steps: 

• Start with a General Statement:  Begin with a general statement about the topic and gradually narrow it down to your specific focus. For example, when discussing the impact of social media, you can begin by making a broad statement about social media and its widespread use in today’s society, as follows: “Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of users worldwide.” 
• Define Key Terms : Define any key terms or concepts that may be unfamiliar to your readers but are essential for understanding your argument. 
• Provide Relevant Statistics:  Use statistics or facts to highlight the significance of the issue you’re discussing. For instance, “According to a report by Statista, the number of social media users is expected to reach 4.41 billion by 2025.” 
• Discuss the Evolution:  Mention previous research or studies that have been conducted on the topic, especially those that are relevant to your argument. Mention key milestones or developments that have shaped its current impact. You can also outline some of the major effects of social media. For example, you can briefly describe how social media has evolved, including positives such as increased connectivity and issues like cyberbullying and privacy concerns. 
• Transition to Your Thesis:  Use the background information to lead into your thesis statement, which should clearly state the main argument or purpose of your essay. For example, “Given its pervasive influence, it is crucial to examine the impact of social media on mental health.” 

A thesis statement is a concise summary of the main point or claim of an essay, research paper, or other type of academic writing. It appears near the end of the introduction. Here’s how to write a thesis statement: 

• Identify the topic:  Start by identifying the topic of your essay. For example, if your essay is about the importance of exercise for overall health, your topic is “exercise.” 
• State your position:  Next, state your position or claim about the topic. This is the main argument or point you want to make. For example, if you believe that regular exercise is crucial for maintaining good health, your position could be: “Regular exercise is essential for maintaining good health.” 
• Support your position:  Provide a brief overview of the reasons or evidence that support your position. These will be the main points of your essay. For example, if you’re writing an essay about the importance of exercise, you could mention the physical health benefits, mental health benefits, and the role of exercise in disease prevention. 
• Make it specific:  Ensure your thesis statement clearly states what you will discuss in your essay. For example, instead of saying, “Exercise is good for you,” you could say, “Regular exercise, including cardiovascular and strength training, can improve overall health and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.” 

Examples of essay introduction 

Here are examples of essay introductions for different types of essays: 

Argumentative Essay Introduction Example:  

Topic: Should the voting age be lowered to 16? 

“The question of whether the voting age should be lowered to 16 has sparked nationwide debate. While some argue that 16-year-olds lack the requisite maturity and knowledge to make informed decisions, others argue that doing so would imbue young people with agency and give them a voice in shaping their future.” 

Expository Essay Introduction Example  

Topic: The benefits of regular exercise 

“In today’s fast-paced world, the importance of regular exercise cannot be overstated. From improving physical health to boosting mental well-being, the benefits of exercise are numerous and far-reaching. This essay will examine the various advantages of regular exercise and provide tips on incorporating it into your daily routine.” 

Text: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee 

“Harper Lee’s novel, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ is a timeless classic that explores themes of racism, injustice, and morality in the American South. Through the eyes of young Scout Finch, the reader is taken on a journey that challenges societal norms and forces characters to confront their prejudices. This essay will analyze the novel’s use of symbolism, character development, and narrative structure to uncover its deeper meaning and relevance to contemporary society.” 

• Engaging and Relevant First Sentence : The opening sentence captures the reader’s attention and relates directly to the topic. 
• Background Information : Enough background information is introduced to provide context for the thesis statement. 
• Definition of Important Terms : Key terms or concepts that might be unfamiliar to the audience or are central to the argument are defined. 
• Clear Thesis Statement : The thesis statement presents the main point or argument of the essay. 
• Relevance to Main Body : Everything in the introduction directly relates to and sets up the discussion in the main body of the essay. 

Writing a strong introduction is crucial for setting the tone and context of your essay. Here are the key takeaways for how to write essay introduction: 3  

• Hook the Reader : Start with an engaging hook to grab the reader’s attention. This could be a compelling question, a surprising fact, a relevant quote, or an anecdote. 
• Provide Background : Give a brief overview of the topic, setting the context and stage for the discussion. 
• Thesis Statement : State your thesis, which is the main argument or point of your essay. It should be concise, clear, and specific. 
• Preview the Structure : Outline the main points or arguments to help the reader understand the organization of your essay. 
• Keep it Concise : Avoid including unnecessary details or information not directly related to your thesis. 
• Revise and Edit : Revise your introduction to ensure clarity, coherence, and relevance. Check for grammar and spelling errors. 
• Seek Feedback : Get feedback from peers or instructors to improve your introduction further. 

The purpose of an essay introduction is to give an overview of the topic, context, and main ideas of the essay. It is meant to engage the reader, establish the tone for the rest of the essay, and introduce the thesis statement or central argument.  

An essay introduction typically ranges from 5-10% of the total word count. For example, in a 1,000-word essay, the introduction would be roughly 50-100 words. However, the length can vary depending on the complexity of the topic and the overall length of the essay.

An essay introduction is critical in engaging the reader and providing contextual information about the topic. To ensure its effectiveness, consider incorporating these key elements: a compelling hook, background information, a clear thesis statement, an outline of the essay’s scope, a smooth transition to the body, and optional signposting sentences.  

The process of writing an essay introduction is not necessarily straightforward, but there are several strategies that can be employed to achieve this end. When experiencing difficulty initiating the process, consider the following techniques: begin with an anecdote, a quotation, an image, a question, or a startling fact to pique the reader’s interest. It may also be helpful to consider the five W’s of journalism: who, what, when, where, why, and how.   For instance, an anecdotal opening could be structured as follows: “As I ascended the stage, momentarily blinded by the intense lights, I could sense the weight of a hundred eyes upon me, anticipating my next move. The topic of discussion was climate change, a subject I was passionate about, and it was my first public speaking event. Little did I know , that pivotal moment would not only alter my perspective but also chart my life’s course.” 

Crafting a compelling thesis statement for your introduction paragraph is crucial to grab your reader’s attention. To achieve this, avoid using overused phrases such as “In this paper, I will write about” or “I will focus on” as they lack originality. Instead, strive to engage your reader by substantiating your stance or proposition with a “so what” clause. While writing your thesis statement, aim to be precise, succinct, and clear in conveying your main argument.  

To create an effective essay introduction, ensure it is clear, engaging, relevant, and contains a concise thesis statement. It should transition smoothly into the essay and be long enough to cover necessary points but not become overwhelming. Seek feedback from peers or instructors to assess its effectiveness. 

References  

• Cui, L. (2022). Unit 6 Essay Introduction.  Building Academic Writing Skills . 
• West, H., Malcolm, G., Keywood, S., & Hill, J. (2019). Writing a successful essay.  Journal of Geography in Higher Education ,  43 (4), 609-617. 
• Beavers, M. E., Thoune, D. L., & McBeth, M. (2023). Bibliographic Essay: Reading, Researching, Teaching, and Writing with Hooks: A Queer Literacy Sponsorship. College English, 85(3), 230-242. 

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• How to structure an essay: Templates and tips

How to Structure an Essay | Tips & Templates

Published on September 18, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The basic structure of an essay always consists of an introduction , a body , and a conclusion . But for many students, the most difficult part of structuring an essay is deciding how to organize information within the body.

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Table of contents

The basics of essay structure, chronological structure, compare-and-contrast structure, problems-methods-solutions structure, signposting to clarify your structure, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about essay structure.

There are two main things to keep in mind when working on your essay structure: making sure to include the right information in each part, and deciding how you’ll organize the information within the body.

Parts of an essay

The three parts that make up all essays are described in the table below.

Order of information

You’ll also have to consider how to present information within the body. There are a few general principles that can guide you here.

The first is that your argument should move from the simplest claim to the most complex . The body of a good argumentative essay often begins with simple and widely accepted claims, and then moves towards more complex and contentious ones.

For example, you might begin by describing a generally accepted philosophical concept, and then apply it to a new topic. The grounding in the general concept will allow the reader to understand your unique application of it.

The second principle is that background information should appear towards the beginning of your essay . General background is presented in the introduction. If you have additional background to present, this information will usually come at the start of the body.

The third principle is that everything in your essay should be relevant to the thesis . Ask yourself whether each piece of information advances your argument or provides necessary background. And make sure that the text clearly expresses each piece of information’s relevance.

The sections below present several organizational templates for essays: the chronological approach, the compare-and-contrast approach, and the problems-methods-solutions approach.

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The chronological approach (sometimes called the cause-and-effect approach) is probably the simplest way to structure an essay. It just means discussing events in the order in which they occurred, discussing how they are related (i.e. the cause and effect involved) as you go.

A chronological approach can be useful when your essay is about a series of events. Don’t rule out other approaches, though—even when the chronological approach is the obvious one, you might be able to bring out more with a different structure.

Explore the tabs below to see a general template and a specific example outline from an essay on the invention of the printing press.

• Thesis statement
• Discussion of event/period
• Consequences
• Importance of topic
• Strong closing statement
• Claim that the printing press marks the end of the Middle Ages
• Background on the low levels of literacy before the printing press
• Thesis statement: The invention of the printing press increased circulation of information in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation
• High levels of illiteracy in medieval Europe
• Literacy and thus knowledge and education were mainly the domain of religious and political elites
• Consequence: this discouraged political and religious change
• Invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg
• Implications of the new technology for book production
• Consequence: Rapid spread of the technology and the printing of the Gutenberg Bible
• Trend for translating the Bible into vernacular languages during the years following the printing press’s invention
• Luther’s own translation of the Bible during the Reformation
• Consequence: The large-scale effects the Reformation would have on religion and politics
• Summarize the history described
• Stress the significance of the printing press to the events of this period

Essays with two or more main subjects are often structured around comparing and contrasting . For example, a literary analysis essay might compare two different texts, and an argumentative essay might compare the strengths of different arguments.

There are two main ways of structuring a compare-and-contrast essay: the alternating method, and the block method.

Alternating

In the alternating method, each paragraph compares your subjects in terms of a specific point of comparison. These points of comparison are therefore what defines each paragraph.

The tabs below show a general template for this structure, and a specific example for an essay comparing and contrasting distance learning with traditional classroom learning.

• Synthesis of arguments
• Topical relevance of distance learning in lockdown
• Increasing prevalence of distance learning over the last decade
• Thesis statement: While distance learning has certain advantages, it introduces multiple new accessibility issues that must be addressed for it to be as effective as classroom learning
• Classroom learning: Ease of identifying difficulties and privately discussing them
• Distance learning: Difficulty of noticing and unobtrusively helping
• Classroom learning: Difficulties accessing the classroom (disability, distance travelled from home)
• Distance learning: Difficulties with online work (lack of tech literacy, unreliable connection, distractions)
• Classroom learning: Tends to encourage personal engagement among students and with teacher, more relaxed social environment
• Distance learning: Greater ability to reach out to teacher privately
• Sum up, emphasize that distance learning introduces more difficulties than it solves
• Stress the importance of addressing issues with distance learning as it becomes increasingly common
• Distance learning may prove to be the future, but it still has a long way to go

In the block method, each subject is covered all in one go, potentially across multiple paragraphs. For example, you might write two paragraphs about your first subject and then two about your second subject, making comparisons back to the first.

The tabs again show a general template, followed by another essay on distance learning, this time with the body structured in blocks.

• Point 1 (compare)
• Point 2 (compare)
• Point 3 (compare)
• Point 4 (compare)
• Advantages: Flexibility, accessibility
• Disadvantages: Discomfort, challenges for those with poor internet or tech literacy
• Advantages: Potential for teacher to discuss issues with a student in a separate private call
• Disadvantages: Difficulty of identifying struggling students and aiding them unobtrusively, lack of personal interaction among students
• Advantages: More accessible to those with low tech literacy, equality of all sharing one learning environment
• Disadvantages: Students must live close enough to attend, commutes may vary, classrooms not always accessible for disabled students
• Advantages: Ease of picking up on signs a student is struggling, more personal interaction among students
• Disadvantages: May be harder for students to approach teacher privately in person to raise issues

An essay that concerns a specific problem (practical or theoretical) may be structured according to the problems-methods-solutions approach.

This is just what it sounds like: You define the problem, characterize a method or theory that may solve it, and finally analyze the problem, using this method or theory to arrive at a solution. If the problem is theoretical, the solution might be the analysis you present in the essay itself; otherwise, you might just present a proposed solution.

The tabs below show a template for this structure and an example outline for an essay about the problem of fake news.

• Introduce the problem
• Provide background
• Describe your approach to solving it
• Define the problem precisely
• Describe why it’s important
• Indicate previous approaches to the problem
• Present your new approach, and why it’s better
• Apply the new method or theory to the problem
• Indicate the solution you arrive at by doing so
• Assess (potential or actual) effectiveness of solution
• Describe the implications
• Problem: The growth of “fake news” online
• Prevalence of polarized/conspiracy-focused news sources online
• Thesis statement: Rather than attempting to stamp out online fake news through social media moderation, an effective approach to combating it must work with educational institutions to improve media literacy
• Definition: Deliberate disinformation designed to spread virally online
• Popularization of the term, growth of the phenomenon
• Previous approaches: Labeling and moderation on social media platforms
• Critique: This approach feeds conspiracies; the real solution is to improve media literacy so users can better identify fake news
• Greater emphasis should be placed on media literacy education in schools
• This allows people to assess news sources independently, rather than just being told which ones to trust
• This is a long-term solution but could be highly effective
• It would require significant organization and investment, but would equip people to judge news sources more effectively
• Rather than trying to contain the spread of fake news, we must teach the next generation not to fall for it

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Signposting means guiding the reader through your essay with language that describes or hints at the structure of what follows.  It can help you clarify your structure for yourself as well as helping your reader follow your ideas.

The essay overview

In longer essays whose body is split into multiple named sections, the introduction often ends with an overview of the rest of the essay. This gives a brief description of the main idea or argument of each section.

The overview allows the reader to immediately understand what will be covered in the essay and in what order. Though it describes what  comes later in the text, it is generally written in the present tense . The following example is from a literary analysis essay on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

Transitions

Transition words and phrases are used throughout all good essays to link together different ideas. They help guide the reader through your text, and an essay that uses them effectively will be much easier to follow.

Various different relationships can be expressed by transition words, as shown in this example.

Because Hitler failed to respond to the British ultimatum, France and the UK declared war on Germany. Although it was an outcome the Allies had hoped to avoid, they were prepared to back up their ultimatum in order to combat the existential threat posed by the Third Reich.

Transition sentences may be included to transition between different paragraphs or sections of an essay. A good transition sentence moves the reader on to the next topic while indicating how it relates to the previous one.

… Distance learning, then, seems to improve accessibility in some ways while representing a step backwards in others.

However , considering the issue of personal interaction among students presents a different picture.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
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• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

An essay isn’t just a loose collection of facts and ideas. Instead, it should be centered on an overarching argument (summarized in your thesis statement ) that every part of the essay relates to.

The way you structure your essay is crucial to presenting your argument coherently. A well-structured essay helps your reader follow the logic of your ideas and understand your overall point.

Comparisons in essays are generally structured in one of two ways:

• The alternating method, where you compare your subjects side by side according to one specific aspect at a time.
• The block method, where you cover each subject separately in its entirety.

It’s also possible to combine both methods, for example by writing a full paragraph on each of your topics and then a final paragraph contrasting the two according to a specific metric.

You should try to follow your outline as you write your essay . However, if your ideas change or it becomes clear that your structure could be better, it’s okay to depart from your essay outline . Just make sure you know why you’re doing so.

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Great Opening Lines: How to Grab Readers and Never Let Them Go

March 23, 2011 By Barbara Santos, Strategic Partnerships Director 2 Comments

Many thanks to author and writing teacher Laura Davis for this outstanding post on how to write great opening lines.

Lots of people ask me about the ideal first line for a book, story, essay or memoir. There is no single answer to this question, although it’s essential to understand that the first line exists for one reason and one reason only: to compel the reader to read the second line. You want to hook the reader and keep him reading.

A great opening line does one or more of the following:

• Begins right in the middle of the story, putting the reader immediately into the dramatic action
• Takes us immediately into another world that we feel we must know more about
• Immediately gives us the opportunity to  escape from our own thoughts, obsessions and concerns
• Let’s us know instantly that we’re in the hands of a master storyteller
• Presents us with something unusual, quirky, amazing, shocking or emotionally gripping
• Introduces us to a fascinating, funny or idiosyncratic character
• Introduces us to an adventure, dilemma or person we simply must know more about
• Establishes a mystery that we want to solve
• Sets a compelling emotional mood or tone
• Builds suspense and tension that makes us want to know more

 I’ve been collecting great first lines for years and I often have my writing students do the same. Here are some of my all time favorites. See if you can identify which of the qualities I just mentioned are achieved by each of the following lines:

“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.” — The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

– -Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides”When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.”  – -The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

“I was five years old the first time I ever set foot in prison.”   –A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca

 “When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT.”   –The History of Love by Nicole Kraus

“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.”   — The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

“The little red light had been flashing for five minutes before Bhangoo paid it any attention. ‘The fuel gauges on these old aircraft are notoriously unreliable.”   –Three Cups of Te a by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” –Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

 “Women on their own run in Alice’s family.” –Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.” –Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

“Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople.”  –Undertaking: Life studies from the dismal trade by Thomas Lynch

“Mavis McPherson is locked in the bathroom and will not come out.” –Ordinary Life by Elizabeth Berg

“On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable.” –I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” –Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

“The first accident wasn’t my fault.”  –“Wheels of Fortune,” Peter Hessler, The New Yorker

“It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.” –Nineteen Eight Four by George Orwell

“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and charred.” –Farhenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

“Do you want a big rat or a small rat?” the waitress asked.  –“A Rat in My Soup,” Peter Hessler, The New Yorker

“On a Sunday morning in the June of my thirty-first year I open the front door of our house looking for the newspaper and find a man standing out there: stoop-shouldered, bent, blotch-skinned, his hair and beard tangled, staring with the big, wet eyes of an animal.” –Blue River, by Ethan Canin

“It is a relatively little-known fact that, over the course of a single year, about 20 million letters are delivered to the dead. ”                                      –Girl with No Shadow by J. Harris

“Mum starved herself for suffrage, Grandmother claiming it was just like Mum to take a cause too far.”   — A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert

“They shot the white girl first.” –Paradise by Toni Morrison

“In the moments before, she laid a hand on his arm. ‘No matter what,’  he said, giving him a look, ‘you cannot stop.'”  –Mercy by Jodi Picoult

Now see if you can find–and write–some of your own!

Laura Davis is the author of seven non-fiction books, including The Courage to Heal , Becoming the Parent You Want to Be and I Thought We’d Never Speak Again . Laura’s groundbreaking books have sold more than 1.8 million copies around the world. Laura leads weekly writing groups and writing retreats in Santa Cruz, CA, as well as internationally. The Writing Retreat of Your Dreams , held in July on the cliffs of Bolinas on the wild northern California coast, is open for registration now, http://www.lauradavis.net/retreat . Each week, Laura sends out  The Writer’s Journey Roadmap –a free inspirational quote and writing prompt, direct to your inbox, http://www.lauradavis.net/prompts .

The 9 th San Francisco Writers Conference / A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community / February 16-20, 2012 / Keynoters: bestselling novelist Lolly Winston and editor Alan Rinzler on his fifty years in publishing / www.sfwriters.org / blog: http: //sfwriters.info/blog / To receive free MKP3s, visit www.sfwriters.info / Twitter: @SFWC / San Francisco Writers University: Where Writers Meet and You Learn, a project of the SFWC / Join its more than 500 members for free feedback on your work / Laurie McLean, Dean /  www.sfwritersu.com

Reader Interactions

[…] Here’s a link to a wonderful blog post by my colleague Michael Larsen that not only talks about great first lines, he gives lots of examples. It’s very inspirational: http://sfwriters.org/blog/great-opening-lines-how-to-grab-readers-and-never-let-them-go/ […]

[…] Make it as visceral and compelling as possible. Here is a great blog post from writing teacher Laura Davis and agent Michael Larsen who tells you how to craft a great first line and gives amazing examples. […]

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The Perfect College Essay With Examples: Get Them Hooked

Jared hobson.

• August 17, 2023

At Great College Advice,  we are offer all sorts of advice on the perfect college essay. Here we focus on college essay introduction examples. In other posts, we have cover the importance of searching for the right topic by making sure the essay focuses on YOU ,  and by  digging deep so that your essay is personal. We also discussed the importance of  telling a good story  and what to do if you are just  stuck .

While choosing the right topic is an important first step in writing the “perfect” essay, it is always the first line of the essay that will draw the admissions officer in. Usually by the end of the first paragraph, they will form an opinion of whether or not the essay is a winner or a dud.

A few years ago,  Stanford University published sample first lines of college essays of admitted students for the Class of 2012. These are great examples of unique and captivating ways to begin an essay.

College Essay Introduction Examples

• I almost didn’t live through September 11th, 2001.
• When I was 8 years old, I shocked my family and a local archaeologist by discovering artifacts dating back almost 3,500 years.
• When I was in eighth grade I couldn’t read.
• While traveling through the daily path of life, have you ever stumbled upon a hidden pocket of the universe?
• The spaghetti burbled and slushed around the pan, and as I stirred it, the noises it gave off began to sound increasingly like bodily functions.
• I had never seen anyone get so excited about mitochondria.
• Cancer tried to defeat me, and it failed.
• I stand on the riverbank surveying this rippled range like some riparian cowboy—instead of chaps, I wear vinyl, thigh-high waders and a lasso of measuring tape and twine is slung over my arm.
• I have old hands.
• Flying over enemy territory, I took in Beirut’s beautiful skyline and wondered if under different circumstances I would have hopped on a bus and come here for my vacation. Instead, I saw the city from the window of a helicopter, in military uniform, my face camouflaged, on my way to a special operation deep behind enemy lines.
• My younger sister, Jessica, arrived home one day reeling about the shirt that her friend had worn to school. It had simply read, “Genocide, Homicide, Suicide, Riverside.”
• I’ll never forget the day when my childhood nightmares about fighting gigantic trolls in the Lord of the Rings series became a reality. Sword in hand and clad in medieval samurai armor, I dragged myself into the battleground as I faced my opponent, a warmongering giant.
• Good Grief! You never would have guessed that an unassuming meek lovable loser like Charlie Brown would have an influence on anyone, but indeed he has.
• Some fathers might disapprove of their children handling noxious chemicals in the garage.
• I was paralyzed from the waist down. I would try to move my leg or even shift an ankle but I never got a response. This was the first time thoughts of death ever crossed my mind.
• As an Indian-American, I am forever bound to the hyphen.
• Journey to Gulu’s outskirts and you will uncover the scene where education was raped 11 years ago; some Ugandan teens also lost their innocence in exchange for their lives.
• I have been surfing Lake Michigan since I was 3 years old.
• On a hot Hollywood evening, I sat on a bike, sweltering in a winter coat and furry boots.
• I change my name each time I place an order at Starbucks.

Make Them Want More

Don’t you want to read more? Didn’t these first lines make you curious? So how do you get that stellar first line? How do you get started with your essay in the first place? Here are some examples from essays that some of my students have developed and how they found their first line.

Example 1: The Good Story

“Here comes a puff!” my dad shouted back to me over the howling wind. Three seconds later the wind lifted and tipped the boat and as I stretched my body over the side, I knew the feeling of the osprey soaring overhead; pure freedom!

Crafting this first line: This student wrote about one of his greatest passions, sailing. He did a great job of creating a visual picture right at the beginning of his essay. You can picture him leaning over the side, the howling wind, the smile on his face. The instant picture creates a connection for the reader and they want to read more.

Example 2: Be funny (but appropriate)

Crouching in the grass, the tiger parents spot their prey. They slowly approach her, watching for any distractions. At the first sign of laziness, they pounce, surprising the girl back into doing her homework. The recent Tiger Mom controversy has brought a new perspective into American culture.

Crafting this first line: This student uses a bit of humor to hook the admissions officer in. She is writing about a relatively serious topic, but by poking fun at it, she has made it even more interesting.

Example 3: Think Outside the Box

Sometimes I really wish I could write in cursive, not the semi-connected scrawl I normally use. When I see people who write in perfect cursive, I can’t help but be overcome by jealousy at the graceful, fluid movements creating equally inspiring marks on the page. 

Crafting this first line: This student had the advantage of having a really different topic to draw her first line. Who would think of writing her college essay about handwriting? Having an “outside of the box” topic can automatically hook an admissions officer and make them wonder where you are going with your idea.

The perfect first line of your essay may not be easy to come by but don’t focus on that first. Sometimes it is easier to write the entire essay than think of the appropriate introduction. Also, think about what is the part of your essay that stands out the most. What is the most unusual aspect? What is the part that most people can relate to? There is a creative first line in your essay somewhere!

Remember that admissions officers, read hundreds of essays a year, and most will read over 50 in a day. The reality is that after a while they all begin to blur together. By crafting the perfect first line, you will not only hook them into your essay, but this will also ensure that you can reel them in!

How to Start Your College Essay

Getting started is hard.  The task can be made harder if you feel pressure to write that first, great line before you’ve even got a good topic. Usually, the opening line becomes more apparent as the the message of the essay becomes more clear. For most students, we find that it’s best not to start with the first line–but to end with it.  

It’s sort of like the art of writing a headline.  Newspapers, magazines, and publishers of online content know how important it Is to grab that attention of the reader.  The “big words” at the top of the story can make a difference:  a great headline will encourage the reader to read on, while a poor one may make a reader skip over the article completely. 

But generally, most publications develop the headline after the article is written. The headline writer is sometimes even a completely different person than the writer of the content. The headline emerges from the content.  

This is how it often works with writing the first line of your college essay.  You might have to complete the essay before a fantastic first line just pops out at you. 

So don’t worry too much if you can’t come up with a fantastic first line of your college essay right away. Focus on crafting a message for the essay that presents you in the best possible light.  When you feel comfortable with what you have written, that first line may just come to in a flash of inspiration. When it does, run with it!

Need help with your college essay?

The team at Great College Advice has years of experience helping student craft an excellent essay that gets those admissions office hooked. If you need help not only finding the introduction to the essay, but you need to decide on a topic and structure it in a way that makes you shine, give us a call or contact us here .  We’d be happy to talk to you about how we have helped thousands of successful college applicants write excellent essays for their applications.  

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Writing Help

Admission essays by, writing the essay: the first sentence.

For an introduction to writing the first sentence of an essay, see "The First Sentence" under Academic Essays . For an introduction to the different kinds of paths your essay might follow, see "Take Your Reader on a Trip" on the same page.

The first draft of your first sentence should be just enough to get you started as you begin to write. Later, after you have a good command of your topic and have a good sense of the overall tone of your essay--this may not be until after you have written several drafts--you can spend time focusing on the first sentence. This point in your writing is a good time to go back to sample essays to see what they accomplish in the first sentence. Does one of them provide a model for a sentence that would work well in your essay?

If you are having trouble structuring your essay, one good strategy is to look through everything you have written for the one best or most moving line. Try putting that sentence at the start and forming the rest of the essay around that primary idea. Note that this line might be the last point chronologically in your narrative--putting it first would give the whole essay an interesting "flashback" structure.

Here are some sample openings that might fit your essay.

1. Dialogue . Dialogue usually gets a reader's attention. This is because dialogue gives a sense of present action. Even one sentence in quotation marks can be enough. Example: "'I don't know where you get those ideas!' my mother said. I was drawing and explaining my latest, perhaps my craziest, back-of-the-placemat 'invention'..." This opening shows that the writer is thoughtful yet aware of the limitations of his ideas, friendly with his mom, and perhaps just the kind of person who can learn to focus his ideas with a good college education.

2. A short, striking sentence . Readers often appreciate writers who can pack a punch and then mellow out. You can be dramatic without being melodramatic. Example: "I held my gun firmly. The paintball field was covered in blue, yellow, and red splotches..."

3. A leisurely introduction . If the essay isn't action-packed but instead paints a beautiful picture for the reader, let the opening suggest a pleasant experience. Example: "Rowing out to the island on Lake Bled, dwarfed by the Slovenian Alps to the north and by an ancient castle high on the eastern hill, I was enjoying the best day of my summer vacation." Take the reader with you through this wonderful experience, using extra phrases and clauses beyond the simple subject and verb of the sentence.

4. A challenge . You can draw the reader into your argument if you advertise that you have learned something that goes against common knowledge. Perhaps you figured out that cats actually love to be petted the "wrong" way, back to front. Example: "Although my parents had warned me never to pet a cat from back to front, I recently discovered that Stitches can't get enough of my 'backward' attentions." This sentence suggests that the writer is willing to challenge cultural norms, which a lot of colleges want to see their students learn to do. Note that this kind of opening frequently starts out with the common knowledge but adds a challenging word such as although, but, while, or even though somewhere in the first clause, and then suggests the content of the challenge in the second clause.

5. A warning . A reader will pay attention when there is something to be concerned about. Examples: "I wish someone had told me two years ago that sometimes a pool of water on the road is really a mirage!" "When I worked for Representative Smith's political campaign last summer, I learned that pollution from factories in our state is far less of a danger to public health than runoff from farms." The second example shows that the writer knows something that readers should be aware of, that the writer did some interesting work, and that the writer learned something valuable from the experience.

Examples of Great Introductory Paragraphs

How to Grab Your Reader's Attention With a Few Words

• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

An introductory paragraph, as the opening of a conventional essay,  composition , or  report , is designed to grab people's attention. It informs readers about the topic and why they should care about it but also adds enough intrigue to get them to continue to read. In short, the opening paragraph is your chance to make a great first impression.

Below, we'll dive into a couple of key elements that make a good introductory paragraph, like clearly outlining the topic and purpose, and examine some dynamic strategies for engaging your audience, such as posing a question or using a brief anecdote.

Writing a Good Introductory Paragraph

The primary purpose of an introductory paragraph is to pique the interest of your reader and identify the topic and purpose of the essay . It often ends with a thesis statement .

You can  engage your readers right from the start through several tried-and-true ways. Posing a question, defining the key term, giving a brief anecdote , using a playful joke or emotional appeal, or pulling out an interesting fact are just a few approaches you can take. Use imagery, details, and sensory information to connect with the reader if you can. The key is to add intrigue along with just enough information so your readers want to find out more. 

One way to do this is to come up with a brilliant opening line . Even the most mundane topics have aspects interesting enough to write about; otherwise, you wouldn't be writing about them, right?

When you begin writing a new piece, think about what your readers want or need to know. Use your knowledge of the topic to craft an opening line that will satisfy that need. You don't want to fall into the trap of what writers call " chasers ," or boring and cliche introductions (such as "The dictionary defines...."). The introduction should make sense and hook the reader right from the start.

Make your introductory paragraph brief. Typically, just three or four sentences are enough to set the stage for both long and short essays. You can go into supporting information in the body of your essay, so don't tell the audience everything all at once.

Should You Write the Intro First?

You can always adjust your introductory paragraph later. Sometimes you just have to start writing. You can start at the beginning or dive right into the heart of your essay.

Your first draft may not have the best opening, but as you continue to write, new ideas will come to you, and your thoughts will develop a clearer focus. Take note of these and, as you work through revisions , refine and edit your opening. 

If you're struggling with the opening, follow the lead of other writers and skip it for the moment. Many writers begin with the body and conclusion and come back to the introduction later. It's a useful, time-efficient approach if you find yourself stuck in those first few words, especially if you have an outline completed or a general framework informally mapped out. If you don't have an outline, even just starting to sketch one can help organize your thoughts and "prime the pump," as it were.

Examples of Successful Introductory Paragraphs

You can read all the advice you want about writing a compelling opening, but it's often easier to learn by example. Take a look at how some writers approached their essays and analyze why they work so well.

Tell a Joke and Spark Curiosity

Mary Zeigler, " How to Catch River Crabs "

"As a lifelong crabber (that is, one who catches crabs, not a chronic complainer), I can tell you that anyone who has patience and a great love for the river is qualified to join the ranks of crabbers. However, if you want your first crabbing experience to be a successful one, you must come prepared."

What did Zeigler do in her introduction? First, she wrote a little joke, but it serves a dual purpose. Not only does it set the stage for her slightly more humorous approach to crabbing, but it also clarifies what type of "crabber" she's writing about. This is important if your subject has more than one meaning.

The other thing that makes this a successful introduction is the fact that Zeigler leaves us wondering. What do we have to be prepared for? Will the crabs jump up and latch onto you? Is it a messy job? What tools and gear do I need? She leaves us with questions, and that draws us in because now we want answers.

Use Vivid Imagery

"Shopping at the Pig"

"Working part-time as a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly has given me a great opportunity to observe human behavior. Sometimes I think of the shoppers as white rats in a lab experiment, and the aisles as a maze designed by a psychologist. Most of the rats—customers, I mean—follow a routine pattern, strolling up and down the aisles, checking through my chute, and then escaping through the exit hatch. But not everyone is so dependable. My research has revealed three distinct types of abnormal customer: the amnesiac, the super shopper, and the dawdler."

This revised classification essay begins by painting a picture of an ordinary scenario: the grocery store. But when used as an opportunity to observe human nature, as this writer does, it turns from ordinary to fascinating.

Who is the amnesiac? Would I be classified as the dawdler by this cashier? The descriptive language and the analogy to rats in a maze add to the intrigue, and readers are left wanting more. For this reason, even though it's lengthy, this is an effective opening.

Invoke Emotion and the Element of Surprise

Roz Savage, " My Transoceanic Midlife Crisis "

"In March 2006, I found myself, at 38, divorced, no kids, no home, and alone in a tiny rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I hadn’t eaten a hot meal in two months. I’d had no human contact for weeks because my satellite phone had stopped working. All four of my oars were broken, patched up with duct tape and splints. I had tendinitis in my shoulders and saltwater sores on my backside. I couldn’t have been happier...."

Here is an example of reversing expectations. The introductory paragraph is filled with doom and gloom. We feel sorry for the writer but are left wondering whether the article will be a classic sob story. It is in the second paragraph that we find out that it's quite the opposite.

Those first few words of the second paragraph, which we cannot help but skim, surprise us and thus draw us in. How can the narrator be happy after all that sorrow? This reversal compels us to find out what happened.

Most people have had streaks where nothing seems to go right. Yet, it is the possibility of a turn of fortunes that compels us to keep going. This writer appealed to our emotions and a sense of shared experience to craft an effective read.

Key Takeaways

• An effective introductory paragraph grabs readers' attention and outlines the topic while adding intrigue to encourage further reading.
• Dynamic strategies like posing questions or using anecdotes can engage readers from the start and set the stage for the essay's content.
• Starting with the body and conclusion first and then revisiting the introduction can be a time-efficient approach if you're struggling with the opening lines.
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• Write an Attention-Grabbing Opening Sentence for an Essay
• How to Write a Good Thesis Statement
• Structure of a Descriptive Essay
• Practice in Supporting a Topic Sentence with Specific Details
• Understanding What an Expository Essay Is
• How to Start an Essay: 13 Engaging Strategies
• Make Your Paragraphs Flow to Improve Writing
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What Makes a Great Opening Line?

Allegra hyde considers love at first sentence.

Maybe it has happened to you: a stranger catches your eye while you peruse the plant identification section of the library, or wander a mossy hillock speckled with Amanita bisporigera, or shuffle along in the funeral procession for your wealthy Aunt Tabitha. The look squeezes a secret place inside you, sets your heart racing—in fear or excitement, you can’t quite tell. Call this kismet. Call it chemistry. Despite all that remains unknown (and that could go wrong), you feel compelled to see where the connection might lead. You know it could change the course of your life.

I say this as a romantic—and as a human who reads and writes fiction. Because the spark of connection can happen on the page in the same way it can in the real world. A great first line can spur intense readerly attraction—provoke a compulsion to know more. Let’s call this: love at first sentence .

Such a reading experience is also a rare one, however. Just as it is easy to encounter most strangers and remain unmoved—so is it easy to not read most works of literature. The world is full of people we will never know and fiction we will never read. It takes something special for a first line to capture the heart of a reader—to propel a text out of a slush pile or off a bookshop shelf—for a work of literature to transform from stranger to intimate.

What is that something, exactly? I started pondering this question in earnest last summer, after signing on to teach a class about fiction’s first lines. To “research” in preparation for the class, I decided to ask around—to ask strangers, specifically, in the spirit of love at first sentence. And so, to the people of Twitter, I posed: “What are your favorite first lines in literature?”

The people of Twitter had plenty to say. From my initial post, a long thread of first lines unfurled, as readers and writers of fiction shared first sentences that had lodged in their brains and stuck. The openers came from a breadth of genres and in all syntactical varieties. There were first lines from odd realist novels, such as:

I was looking at the map when Stephen swerved, hit the rock, and occasioned the miscarriage. – The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink

And there were openings from speculative short stories:

Seven corporations control the afterlife now, and many people spend their lives amassing the money to upload into the best. –Louise Erdrich, “Domain”

There were long opening sentences, such as:

Back when my parents and I lived in Bushwick in a building sandwiched between a drug house and another drug house, the only difference being that the dealers in the one drug house were also the users and so more unpredictable, and in the other the dealers were never the users and so more shrewd—back in those days, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment so subpar that we woke up with flattened cockroaches in our bedsheets, sometimes three or four stuck on our elbows, and once I found fourteen of them pressed to my calves, and there was no beauty in shaking them off, though we strove for grace, swinging our arms in the air as if we were ballerinas. –Jenny Zhang, “We Love You Crispina”

There were short, punchy openers like:

Mother died today. –Albert Camus, The Stranger

  As well as:

They shoot the white girl first. –Toni Morrison, Paradise

Several of Morrison’s opening lines were highlighted again and again. Other frequent repeats included:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. –Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

–Shirley Jackson, Haunting of Hill House

Then there was fan favorite:

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. –Donna Tartt, The Secret History

The responses to my Twitter inquiry crystallized a nascent theory I’d been formulating about what made certain first lines memorable and propulsive—because, although the sentences came in all varieties, a pattern emerged. Nearly all the favorite first lines gave readers an elegantly balanced dose of clarity and curiosity . Or to put this another way: seductive first sentences ground a reader in a situation, while also prompting a question in the reader’s mind that propels them forward in the text.

This might seem simple from the outset, but clarity and curiosity can be at odds with one another if not calibrated carefully; too much of one attribute can overwhelm the other, diminishing the overall power of the first sentence.

But let’s define these terms more thoroughly before going any further. By “clarity,” I mean the ability of a first sentence to give readers an initial hand-hold for place and/or time and/or character and/or plot. Clarity is essential for a first sentence because, at the start of a story or novel—barring whatever information a reader might have encountered on the jacket copy or in reviews—the reader’s mental theater is a void. An unlit stage. A nothingness. Every word in that first sentence is an opportunity to shine a light on what is to come—to give a reader enough information to stabilize them in some degree of who and where and what the story is about. Returning to Nell Zink’s opener for Wallcreeper , we see a beautiful example of clarity in action:

I was looking at the map when Stephen swerved, hit the rock, and occasioned the miscarriage.

This sentence tells readers that the novel features a first-person narrator who has some kind of relationship with person named Stephen, and that the pair is traveling, and that the accident of the miscarriage has occurred because of Stephen’s driving. This is an astonishing amount of context to be delivered in the space of a short sentence. Few readers would get entangled in Zink’s syntax, moreover, despite the unexpected place the sentence ends up. Though there are unknowns in the opener, there are not abstractions—which would have been the case if the sentence wasn’t diligently specific.

Is it possible for a sentence to be overly clear—too contextualized? Absolutely. We’ve all read sentences so freighted with detail that narrative momentum comes to a standstill. Just as the thrill love at first sight necessitates a degree of mystique, so does a compelling first sentence require certain gaps in information. Something has to remain unanswered, unexplained, unresolved—because therein lies the special chemistry between clarity and curiosity. We need to know enough to wonder more.

What invokes curiosity in a reader, and thereby keeps them reading? In my opinion: weirdness, conflict, tragedy, mystery, the supernatural, any whiff of struggle, or something being slightly off . Reading Zink’s first sentence for Wallcreeper , I found myself wondering big questions like: Why did Stephen swerve? What happened next? Where were these people going and why? But I also found the narrator’s tone to be a little odd. The word “occasioned” is an unusual verb, suggesting a distinctive attitude. This diction made me willing—no, eager—to read more.

Reviewing Twitter’s favorite first lines, I was struck by another commonality, housed under the umbrella of clarity and curiosity. Maybe you have already noticed from the examples given in this essay—but it seems that many iconic first sentences mention death. Though at first I found the ubiquity of death in people’s favorite fiction openers a touch disturbing, upon reflection this commonality made perfect sense. In all these sentences, death is presented alongside some mention of time; time and death, one could argue, are clarity and curiosity pushed toward a logical end point. Information about time offers readers a sense of clarity by indicating the temporal architecture of a story. And the mention of death—the greatest unknown—makes us curious, which generates narrative momentum. Just look at Toni Morrison’s first line from Paradise :

They shoot the white girl first.

Someone is shot (death) and we are offered an order of events (time).

These two components can be observed once again in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez :

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

There is a firing squad (death), which makes Colonel Aureliano remember what happened in the past (time).

Death and time also appear in Louise Erdrich’s “Domain”:

Seven corporations control the afterlife now, and many people spend their lives amassing the money to upload into the best.

Erdrich opens with a speculative technology relating to the afterlife (death) and there is a reference to how people spend their lives (time).

Finally, death and time are fused into an irresistible package in Donna Tartt’s opener from The Secret History :

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

In this first line, Bunny has died (death) and weeks have passed before anyone realizes (time). The sentence is at once straightforward and provocative. Readers are given a sense of setting, of conflict, and of the parties involved, yet they are also left with questions like: How did Bunny die? Why is the situation grave? Who is telling this story? Who is we?

In case you don’t quite believe that death and (at least a whiff of) time make frequent appearances in many seductive first lines, here are a few more from my Twitter inquiry and beyond:

Nobody died that year. –Renata Adler,   Speedboat

I was not sorry when my brother died. –Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. –William Gibson, Neuromancer  

A dead man twists around one of my Doric columns. –Diane Cook, “Bounty”

I like to think I know what death is. –Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

They were married on the Day of the Dead, el Día de los Muertos, which no one gave much thought to in all the months of planning, until the bride’s deceased father-in-law showed up in the car following the ceremony. –Natalie Sylvester, Ev eryone Knows You Go Home

On the evening Margio killed Anwar Sadat, Kyai Jahro was blissfully busy with his fishpond. –Eka Kurniawan, Man Tiger

I saw my mother raise a man from the dead. –Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie

  Of course, death and time are not absolutely imperative for every memorable first line. Many would call Jane Austen’s aphoristic opener to Pride and Prejudice the most famous first line in the English-language, and it contains no explicit mention of death:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.  

Though I could make the case that being “in possession of a good fortune” implies that someone has died so that the single man could inherit a fortune, what is more important here is that the clarity/curiosity principle holds true. Austen gives readers a seemingly straightforward truism that grounds readers in the themes of the novel to come, while also adding a provocative tinge of irony with the phrase “universally acknowledged.” Her calibration of clarity and curiosity is impeccable and indelible.

Slightly ironic truisms are one approach to first sentences, but there are many other ways of engaging readers while still balancing the aforementioned attributes. Take these openers, which are all in the form of a direct address:

Open the cabinet. –Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren

See the child. –Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Call me Ishmael. –Herman Melville, Moby Dick

In these sentences, readers are given the hint of a situation and the intriguing zing of an instruction. As readers, we visualize a piece of furniture, a child, or a person named Ishmael—while also wondering why we’re being told what we are. There is a flirty confidence to these lines and the way they demand engagement, hustling us into the narrative ahead.

Then there works of fiction that coax readers forward with a question:

Why is the measure of love loss? –Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” –Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Curiosity is made explicit in these examples, since a question begs an answer. Meanwhile clarity, in Winterson’s opener, comes via the expression of theme—just like in Austen’s first line to Pride and Prejudice . Burgess’s opener is admittedly abstract—especially given the ambiguity of “it”—but one could argue that the colloquial tone of the question, the vaguely intimidating nudge-nudge vibe, offers contextual orientation that makes sense for A Clockwork Orange . Readers get a sense of what they’re in for.

The first line of A Clockwork Orange is also an example of starting with dialogue, which is one of the most challenging ways to begin a story or novel. This is because, in the informational void that is the beginning of any work of fiction, dialogue can be difficult to place—it’s a sound vibrating through the ether—thereby making clarity more difficult to achieve. I am certainly not the first writer to raise this point; Ann Hood cautions against starting with dialogue in her wonderful essay “Beginnings,” which appears in The Writer’s Notebook II from Tin House . To pull off such an opener, according to Hood: “The dialogue must be compelling enough to draw the reader in before he or she knows anything about the character(s) speaking or the context in which the dialogue is taking place.” I would add that having a dialogue tag spill into scene can help ground a reader in place, time, character, and other contextual essentials. Here are two examples of approaching dialogue this way:

“Pink is the color for girls,” Kiera says, so she and Ava cut their palms and let their blood drip into a shallow bowl filled with milk, watching the color spread slowly on the surface, small red flowers blooming. –Dantiel W. Moniz, “Milk Blood Heat”

“Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. –E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

Both Moniz’s and White’s openers give readers the contextual handholds necessary to stabilize readers in a scene, and throw open the door to intrigue. These sentences show, once again, that the form or style of a first line is less important than how the author generates an alchemic blend of clarity and curiosity. After all, though Moniz’s and White’s lines both gesture towards physical violence and the specter of suffering, a first line can also dazzle simply for being funny. Take these examples, which ground a reader in a situation, while zooming forward on comedic momentum:

Dad thought himself a good-looking man. –Souvankham Thammavongsa, “Good-Looking”

My classroom was on the first floor, next to the nuns’ lounge. –Ottessa Moshfegh, “Bettering Myself”

Unlike the typical bluesy earthy folksy denim-overalls noble-in-the-face-of-cracker-racism aw shucks Pulitzer-Prize-winning protagonist mojo magic black man, I am not the seventh son of the seventh son of the seventh son. –Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuy. –Ha Jin, Waiting

Other well-loved first sentences use oddness as a springboard for curiosity—giving readers just enough clarity to keep them engaged. Sentences like:

A screaming comes across the sky. –Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

I lost an arm on my last trip home. –Octavia Butler, Kindred

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. –George Orwell, 1984

I n a labor camp, somewhere in the Persian Gulf, a laborer swallowed his passport and turned into a passport. –Deepack Unnikrishnan, “Gulf Return”

My mother had two placentas and I was living off both of them. –Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

Nothing moved except the mirage. –Adania Shibli, Minor Detail

In an ideal world we would have been orphans. –Miranda July, “Something That Needs Nothing”

Then there are first sentences that are simply disarmingly congenial:

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini’s ‘The Thieving Magpie,’ which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. –Haruki Murakami, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

What I am getting at here, at the end of this essay, is that love at first sentence is a wide open field. There are many kinds of sentences—just like there are many kinds of people—that might beguile you if they present the right blend of clarity and curiosity, perceptibility and mystery. There may be certain sentences that catch more eyes—sentences featuring death and time, in particular—but ultimately (and apologies for the cliché) beauty is the eye of the beholder. What is important, in the end, is that the right first sentence finds the right reader. Because what is a sentence if not one step in an ongoing series of steps? And what is a relationship except one moment of connection followed by another, and then another—as long as the connection lasts? In the case of fiction, this is a relationship that hopefully extends all the way from cover to cover.

_________________________________________________

Allegra Hyde’s novel Eleutheria is available now via Vintage.

Allegra Hyde

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Should I indent the first line of the first paragraph in a chapter?

I was reading a thesis report of a friend and I noticed that he didn't indent the first line of the first paragraph in each chapter. I don't remember noticing it anywhere before until I saw it there and I have some OCD issues with reformatting the documents/reports and make them look awesome.

So I would like to know, if I'm going to write a new document/report that is divided in chapters and paragraphs, what kind of indentation should I prefer? Should I indent all the first lines of the paragraphs regarding if it's the first in a chapter or not and why one method is better than the other?

• 1 What's the context of this question? Are you typing something up for school? Writing a fiction MS for submission? Typesetting a self-pubbed book? We need more details, or it's pretty hard to answer. –  Kate S. Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 20:44
• 2 As a teacher of middle school students we always teach that students should indent the first paragraph. This is always taught in the text that is provided to us for instruction. My sharp students that are avid readers always bring to my attention that their books seldom indent the first paragraph. Very confusing for young readers and writers. It may be time to clarify this rule for the purpose of consistent instruction in the schools involving publishing companies and text book companies. –  user4749 Commented Feb 15, 2013 at 15:10
• I indent. Not indenting looks and feels weird. –  K124ST Commented Jun 7, 2013 at 5:34
• Same question on Graphic Design SE . –  Wrzlprmft Commented May 21, 2020 at 10:34

11 Answers 11

I have been taught to always leave the first line of a chapter/section unindented, then make all subsequent paragraphs indented. I have also seen all paragraphs indented.

I came across a good discussion on first line indents which notes that, in Robert Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style , he states that "opening paragraphs" should be "flush left" because "[t]he function of a paragraph indent is to mark a pause, setting the paragraph apart from what precedes it. If a paragraph is preceded by a title or subhead, the indent is superfluous and can therefore be omitted".

(They also mention that Chicago rules state that "the first line of text following a subhead may begin flush left or be indented by the usual paragraph indention.")

Generally speaking, ask the person or people to whom you are submitting how s/he/they want the document formatted.

Barring that, I have seen the first line indented and subsequent paragraphs not indented, but not the reverse. It would look like a mistake to me.

I would either indent everything or not indent anything. If you're not indenting, use a double space between paragraphs.

• 1 Of course it's up to the people if I'm submitting.. I just saw it there and to tell you the truth it looked like a mistake to me as well.. But after a second view/thought I liked it.. and I wondered if people are using it and if there is somekind of reason for it.. @Craig gave a good reason :) –  Lipis Commented Jun 22, 2011 at 0:56

This isn't a matter for you to worry about as a writer, but rather a matter for the publisher's typesetter, and it may vary by publisher. In your manuscript, either is fine, but be consistent.

For a thesis report, different academic citation systems have different styles. I am more familiar with MLA style rather than Chicago, which someone has already discussed.

MLA asks that every paragraph is indented and that there are no extra lines separating paragraphs.

The only exception I know of to this rule is if you have a multi-line paragraph quote from a source and resume your current paragraph after the quote. A good example is on page 7 of this sample essay .

However, like people have said, this is usually the typesetter's job if you are submitting something to be published. Usually consistency is the best way to go and can make the typesetter's job easier.

Don't use Microsoft Word. When you pay more attention to what the font looks like than your character's motives you get beautifully typeset crap. Unless you have need of six different types of quotes, don't even look at your font until you are negotiating with a publisher, and with the increased ebook market maybe that is a decision that is out of your hands.

1) You should indent the first line of the paragraph. I find it helps reading tremendously as it shows where the paragraph BEGINS. Otherwise, you only see where the paragraph ENDS when its last line doesn't reach the right margin – but often it does reach, making the end of the paragraph ambiguous. NB: I do have a lot of books, mostly textbook like, that don't indent. In textbook like text, it's OK for my taste, but I prefer indented. In fiction, it's absolutely essential. The paragraph carries meaning. It should be communicated to the reader. Indentation makes it clear. As said, otherwise it can be ambiguous.

2) Professionally printed material (take up any novel) doesn't indent after a headline or page break or some such, such as in the first paragraph of a chapter. Should you do it? If you're using Word or another WYSIWYG word processor, don't bother. The workflows to do that are too complicated, too error prone, lead to more work and unintentend changes in your document. Stick with the indented first line.

3) If you want to produce a document with it (all paragraphs indented except the first one), use a program that has it built in. LaTeX does it, beautifully and easily (as easy as it can. I know most people find it cumbersome. I don't, but YMMV). Scrivener also can do it when you compile you project. I'm certain there are others that would do it that I do not know about, but I'm sure about those two.

4) Even if I prefer first line indents, if you publish, your editor, copy-editor, publisher etc. might object and prefer it the other way, and make you change it. If you happen to use Word, you're in a world of trouble (of lots of work) to change if you happen to have not used the same indentation throughout your document. Hence my recommendation to not bother with indents after headlines or chapter beginnings. Keep it constant throughout. Saves you lots of trouble.

Here is the answer on Wikipedia :

Professionally printed material typically does not indent the first paragraph, but indents those that follow. For example, Robert Bringhurst states that we should "Set opening paragraphs flush left."[4] Bringhurst explains as follows ... Keyboarders normally indent paragraphs three to five word spaces—based on what they were taught in school—while professionally printed material such as books and magazines generally use smaller indents. For example, The Elements of Typographic Style states that "at least one en [space]" should be used to indent paragraphs after the first,[6] noting that that is the "practical minimum".[7] An em space is the most commonly used paragraph indent.[8] Miles Tinker, in his book Legibility of Print, concluded that indenting the first line of paragraphs increases readability by 7%, on the average.[9] Other techniques are possible. Lines can be outdented to signify the start of new paragraphs.[10] Another technique is to insert vertical space between paragraphs. This creates what is sometimes known as "block paragraphs". Some keyboarders use a double carriage return to create this break, whereas typists using word processing applications may use increased leading to create a more pleasing space between paragraphs.

The answer? I think you can either indent it or you don't. It's up to you.

I read somewhere that if you are double spacing between paragraphs, no indent was needed. But if you were single spacing, an indent was needed to show a new paragraph was starting. That is the "rule" I follow.

• Hi and welcome to Writers.SE. Do you remember where you read this? If so, if you edit that in your answer will be more valuable to the community. Thanks. –  Monica Cellio Commented Jun 3, 2013 at 19:50
• This is the rule of thumb I was taught in graphic design classes. As @Craig-Sefton notes, the indent is intended to provide a visual pause. So an indent plus a double line space is redundant and unnecessary. –  Ken Mohnkern Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 10:55
• I believe the military writing format has this as well. –  Jason K Commented Nov 7, 2016 at 22:18

Honestly, like many said, you should indent the first line, especially if you live in USA. In Portugal, for example, we didn't indent the first line of the first paragraph.

The majority of respondents opted for not indenting first paragraphs of chapters. Their attitude appears to be, “Do what you want.” That’s fine, but if you are writing with an eye toward having someone publishing your novel it would behoove you to keep in mind, 85% of publishers, literary agents, and copyeditors want to see your work presented in the Chicago style of writing: therefore, make first paragraphs flush left.

• The majority of respondents. Did you perform a survey? Or are you quoting someone else's survey results without attribution? –  TRiG Commented Sep 14, 2016 at 11:31

Merely look at all the above answers. They don't indent and follow the flush left rule - increasing then space between paragraphs. This is becoming more and more common both in books as in scientific articles. In the end, it depends on personal taste and editor/publisher preferences. In Portugal, someone added that the first line of the first paragraph is not indented - that, also, varies with publishers. Rules are made to broken by time and taste.

• To be fair, many of the paragraphs here are only 1-2 sentences. I was taught that a paragraph needs at least 3 :) But yeah internet conversational writing is really infecting "literature". I'm waiting for emoticons to show up in a novel. –  Jason K Commented Nov 7, 2016 at 22:17

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• Writing Tips

A Guide to Indenting Paragraphs

4-minute read

• 9th July 2022

Indentation refers to the gap between the left-hand margin and the beginning of text on the page or screen. Like font choice and line spacing , indentation might seem like a trivial formatting decision, but using indentation effectively makes your writing more professional-looking and easier to read.

In this guide, we’ll summarize the rules for indentation given by three of the most common style guides. Then we’ll explain the simplest way to apply paragraph indentation in Microsoft Word. First though, what are the different types of indentation?

Indentation Options

Microsoft Word offers three choices of indentation style:

●  Standard: Each line of text is indented by a specified amount. This type of indentation is useful for block quotes and other sections of text that you want to set apart.

●  First line: Indentation is applied to the first line of each paragraph. This provides a visual clue to readers that you’re shifting focus or introducing a new idea.

●  Hanging: An indent is applied to the second and subsequent lines of each paragraph. Hanging indentation is most often used in works cited lists and bibliographies, as it enables readers to easily scan the list of authors.

Indentation in APA Style

In APA , you should indent the first line of each paragraph by 0.5” (1.27 cm). This rule also applies to the abstract, except for the first line, which should be left aligned.

Standard indentation of 0.5” is applied to block quotations, and if the quote runs to more than one paragraph, you must indent the first line of the second and subsequent paragraphs by a further 0.5”.

The entries in an APA reference list should have a hanging indent of 0.5”.

Indentation in MLA Style

The guidelines for MLA are very similar to those of APA with a slight difference in the formatting of block quotes. In MLA, the first line of the second and subsequent paragraphs of block quotes should be indented by only 0.25”. Moreover, if the beginning of the first paragraph of the block quote begins a paragraph in the source text, it too should be indented by 0.25”.

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Indentation in Associated Press Style

The Associated Press Stylebook says that you should not use indentation to indicate the start of a new paragraph. Instead, you should hit the Enter key twice at the end of a paragraph (like we do in our blog posts). Block quotes should have standard indentation of 0.5”.

How to Apply Indentation in MS Word

One quick way to indent text is to hit the Tab key when the cursor is at the beginning of a line. This will indent the line by 0.5”. Pressing Tab again will increase the indent by a further 0.5” and so on. However, if you want to apply a consistent indentation style throughout a section or an entire document, it’s more efficient to use the options in the Paragraph section of the Home tab.

To automatically apply indentation to the first line of every paragraph, select Paragraph Options on the Home tab, then choose First line from the list of special indentations. Finally, enter the size of indentation you require in centimeters (e.g., 1.27).

Hanging indentations work in much the same way. You simply choose Hanging instead of First line .

For block quotes, you can use the Increase Indent button, which appears on the Home and Layout tabs. Each time you press it, the indent increases by 0.5”. You can then reduce or remove the indent with the Decrease Indent button.

Alternatively, you could create a custom style for block quotes using the Styles feature. To do this, follow these steps:

• Select the relevant text and apply indentation either with the Increase Indent button or by entering the required size in Paragraph Options .
• With the text still selected, click on the Styles Pane and select New Style.
• A Create New Style from Formatting box should appear. Enter a name for your newly created style (e.g., Block quote ).

You will then be able to choose the same style and easily apply it to all of the block quotes in your document.

Flawless Formatting

We hope you now feel confident about when and how to apply indentation in your writing. When you upload a document to us for proofreading , you can add full formatting as an extra option. Or, if your writing has already been checked for errors, we offer a formatting-only service— contact us today for a quote.

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Step-By-Step Guide to Indent in Microsoft Word

Last Updated: January 26, 2024 Fact Checked

Word 2016/2019/2021 & Microsoft 365

Word 2010/2013.

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Darlene Antonelli, MA . Darlene Antonelli is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. Darlene has experience teaching college courses, writing technology-related articles, and working hands-on in the technology field. She earned an MA in Writing from Rowan University in 2012 and wrote her thesis on online communities and the personalities curated in such communities. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 404,540 times. Learn more...

Do you want Word to indent the first line of every paragraph automatically? Fortunately, Word allows you to set the default to indent your new paragraphs with just a few simple menu changes. This wikiHow article shows you how to indent the first line of every paragraph in Microsoft Word.

Things You Should Know

• To indent lines in Word, right-click the "Normal" style and select "Modify." [1] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source
• Click "Format > Paragraph", and select "First line" to indent the first line of each paragraph. [2] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source
• Select "New documents based on this template" to make every document you open in Word work like this.

• If you want a bigger indent, change the number under "By" in the "Indentation" section.
• See how it will look with your indentation in the "Preview" window.

• This will not only indent the first line of every existing paragraph but will also indent lines as you write.

• You may do this before you start typing your document or if you have already typed a document. If you already have text in your document, highlight the paragraphs you want indented.

Expert Q&A

• If you want to prevent a line from being indented when this setting is on, hold the Shift key down while pressing Enter. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• In case you changed the appropriate settings but still don't see an indent in existing paragraphs, put your cursor at the beginning of a paragraph and press Backspace and Enter on your keyboard. This will manually add an indent to the line where your cursor is. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/indent-the-first-line-of-a-paragraph-b3721167-e1c8-40c3-8a97-3f046fc72d6d
• ↑ https://columbiacollege-ca.libguides.com/microsoft-word/indentation
• ↑ https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/word/indents-and-tabs/1/

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