HOW NOT TO BEGIN AN ESSAY
1. Avoid the dictionary definition.
Never begin an essay like this: "Webster's Dictionary defines crisis as 'a decisive or crucial time, stage, or event.'"
2. Avoid a vague and general declaration about history.
Unless the appeal to history is specific─ telling a story from the past, for example─ the comment that something has happened "throughout recorded history" or "from the beginning of history" is boring!
3. Avoid the blueprint beginning.
In this article I am going to tell you about the World Series. I shall tell you what teams played in it, provide some background about their records during the season, their victories and their defeats, managers and coaches, and star players. I shall recount tantrums by players over their contracts, their run-ins with drugs, their fights in barrooms, their abuse of their wives, their infidelities, and their adorable children, and I shall make some remarks about their ambitious parents. I shall include a summary of each of the games and will conclude with the results and at long last tell you who won.
DON'T DO THIS!!!
4. Avoid the “If ________ were to come back from the dead, he/she would…” beginning.
"If Thomas Edison were to come back from the dead, he would be astounded to see how far the motion picture has progressed since his primitive invention that set film turning through cameras." If Thomas Edison actually came back from the dead, he'd be too busy to care about the film industry because he'd be booked on every talk show imaginable.
* Examples taken from Marius, Richard. A Writer's Companion. 4th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill College, 1999.