Its function is not just to set out the gist of the thinking, but to direct and speed the task of writing for the author. This article looks at how the introduction serves the document, and shows how the process of developing it is the key to clear writing. The introduction exists to remind the reader of the question the document is meant to answer. To see why that makes sense, we have to look at what a clearly structured document looks like. A clearly structured document groups together sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into sections, and sections under a single summary thought, as shown in Figure 1.
Ideas go in the boxes.
An idea raises a question in the reader's mind because the writer is saying something the reader doesn't know - that is, the writer's thinking. If you present the ideas in a pyramid form, you automatically create a question-answer dialogue with the reader. The top point will make a statement that raises a question that will be answered on the line below, as in Figure 2. The writer then continues to raise and answer questions down the pyramid until the point is reached where there are no more questions logically in the reader's mind. For this to work, the point at the top of the pyramid must be the right one for the reader.