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Revision as of 23:53, 21 April 2009
Template:Original research Template:Selfref A lead paragraph in Literature refers to the opening paragraph of an article, essay, news story or book chapter. Often called just "the lead", it usually opens together with the headline or title, almost always gives the reader the main idea of the story preceding the main body of the article and the final conclusion. The "lead" immediately grabs the attention of the reader and must be at least three sentences long. It also needs to directly relate to the body of the article. The word is sometimes spelled lede in the journalism industry. [2]
Types of leads
Journalistic leads emphasise grabbing the attention of the reader.&
In journalism, the failure to mention the most interesting or attention grabbing elements of a story in the first paragraph is sometimes called "burying the lead."
Leads in essays summarize the outline of the argument and conclusion that follows in the main body of the essay. Encyclopedia leads tend to do define the subject matter as well as emphasizing the interesting points of the article. General articles in magazines tend to be somewhere in between journalism and encyclopedias and often lack a distinct lead entirely. Leads or introductions in books vary enormously in length and content.
Rules
The key to understanding the lead usually lies in the reader’s ability to identify and understand the subject and the main verb. In general, there are three sentence types found in the lead.
- The subject and the main verb are found together at or near the beginning of the sentence. This is by far, the most common sentence type.
- The subject is separated from the main verb by information about the subject, often in the subject, often in the form of a relative clause – the clause that starts with who, which, when, where and whose.
- The sentence begins with an introductory phrase. In such cases, students must learn to read until they find a comma, after which they will find the main verb.
