TYPES OF BEGINNINGS.  Because of the importance of the introduction, the writer should familiarize himself with the different kinds of beginnings, and should study them from the point of view of their suitability for various types of articles.  The seven distinct types of beginnings are:  (1) summary; (2) narrative; (3) description; (4) striking statement; (5) quotation; (6) question; (7) direct address.  Combinations of two or more of these methods are not infrequent.

Summary Beginnings.  The general adoption by newspapers of the summary beginning, or “lead,” for news stories has accustomed the average reader to finding most of the essential facts of a piece of news grouped together in the first paragraph.  The lead, by telling the reader the nature of the event, the persons and things concerned, the time, the place, the cause, and the result, answers his questions, What?  Who?  When?  Where?  Why?  How?  Not only are the important facts summarized in such a beginning, but the most striking detail is usually “played up” in the first group of words of the initial sentence where it catches the eye at once.  Thus the reader is given both the main facts and the most significant feature of the subject.  Unquestionably this news story lead, when skillfully worked out, has distinct advantages alike for the news report and for the special article.

SUMMARY BEGINNINGS

    (1)

    (Kansas City Star)

    A FRESH AIR PALACE READY

A palace of sunshine, a glass house of fresh air, will be the Christmas offering of Kansas City to the fight against tuberculosis, the “Great White Plague.”  Ten miles from the business district of the city, overlooking a horizon miles away over valley and hill, stands the finest tuberculosis hospital in the United States.  The newly completed institution, although not the largest hospital of the kind, is the best equipped and finest appointed.  It is symbolic of sunshine and pure air, the cure for the disease.

    (2)

    (New York World)

    STOPPING THE COST OF LIVING LEAKS

    BY MARIE COOLIDGE RASK

After ten weeks’ instruction in domestic economy at a New York high school, a girl of thirteen has been the means of reducing the expenditure in a family of seven to the extent of five dollars a week.

The girl is Anna Scheiring, American born, of Austrian ancestry, living with her parents and brothers and sisters in a five-room apartment at No. 769 East One Hundred and Fifty-eighth Street, where her father, Joseph Scheiring is superintendent of the building.

The same economic practices applied by little Anna Scheiring are at the present time being worked out in two thousand other New York homes whose daughters are pupils in the Washington Irving High School.

    (3)