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Original Research

An original research paper should present a unique argument of your own. In other words, the claim of the paper should be debatable and should be your (the researcher’s) own original idea. Typically an original research paper builds on the existing research on a topic, addresses a specific question, presents the findings according to a standard structure (described below), and suggests questions for further research and investigation. Though writers in any discipline may conduct original research, scientists and social scientists in particular are interested in controlled investigation and inquiry. Their research often consists of direct and indirect observation in the laboratory or in the field. Many scientists write papers to investigate a hypothesis (a statement to be tested).

Although the precise order of research elements may vary somewhat according to the specific task, most include the following elements:

• Table of contents
• List of illustrations
• Body of the report
• References cited

Check your assignment for guidance on which formatting style is required. The Complete Discipline Listing Guide (Purdue OWL)  provides information on the most common style guide for each discipline, but be sure to check with your instructor.

The title of your work is important. It draws the reader to your text. A common practice for titles is to use a two-phrase title where the first phrase is a broad reference to the topic to catch the reader’s attention. This phrase is followed by a more direct and specific explanation of your project. For example:

“Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!: The Effects of Large Predators on Livestock Yields.”

The first phrase draws the reader in – it is creative and interesting. The second part of the title tells the reader the specific focus of the research.

In addition, data base retrieval systems often work with  keywords  extracted from the title or from a list the author supplies. When possible, incorporate them into the title. Select these words with consideration of how prospective readers might attempt to access your document. For more information on creating keywords, refer to this  Springer research publication guide.

See the KU Writing Center Writing Guide on Abstracts for detailed information about creating an abstract.

Table of Contents

The table of contents provides the reader with the outline and location of specific aspects of your document. Listings in the table of contents typically match the headings in the paper. Normally, authors number any pages before the table of contents as well as the lists of illustrations/tables/figures using lower-case roman numerals. As such, the table of contents will use lower-case roman numbers to identify the elements of the paper prior to the body of the report, appendix, and reference page. Additionally, because authors will normally use Arabic numerals (e.g., 1, 2, 3) to number the pages of the body of the research paper (starting with the introduction), the table of contents will use Arabic numerals to identify the main sections of the body of the paper (the introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references, and appendices).

Here is an example of a table of contents:

ABSTRACT..................................................iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................iv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...........................v

LIST OF TABLES.........................................vii

INTRODUCTION..........................................1

LITERATURE REVIEW.................................6

METHODS....................................................9

RESULTS....................................................10

DISCUSSION..............................................16

CONCLUSION............................................18

REFERENCES............................................20

APPENDIX................................................. 23

More information on creating a table of contents can be found in the Table of Contents Guide (SHSU)  from the Newton Gresham Library at Sam Houston State University.

List of Illustrations

Authors typically include a list of the illustrations in the paper with longer documents. List the number (e.g., Illustration 4), title, and page number of each illustration under headings such as "List of Illustrations" or "List of Tables.”

Body of the Report

The tone of a report based on original research will be objective and formal, and the writing should be concise and direct. The structure will likely consist of these standard sections:  introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion . Typically, authors identify these sections with headings and may use subheadings to identify specific themes within these sections (such as themes within the literature under the literature review section).

Introduction

Given what the field says about this topic, here is my contribution to this line of inquiry.

The introduction often consists of the rational for the project. What is the phenomenon or event that inspired you to write about this topic? What is the relevance of the topic and why is it important to study it now? Your introduction should also give some general background on the topic – but this should not be a literature review. This is the place to give your readers and necessary background information on the history, current circumstances, or other qualities of your topic generally. In other words, what information will a layperson need to know in order to get a decent understanding of the purpose and results of your paper? Finally, offer a “road map” to your reader where you explain the general order of the remainder of your paper. In the road map, do not just list the sections of the paper that will follow. You should refer to the main points of each section, including the main arguments in the literature review, a few details about your methods, several main points from your results/analysis, the most important takeaways from your discussion section, and the most significant conclusion or topic for further research.   

Literature Review

This is what other researchers have published about this topic.

In the literature review, you will define and clarify the state of the topic by citing key literature that has laid the groundwork for this investigation. This review of the literature will identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies between previous investigations and this one, and suggest the next step in the investigation chain, which will be your hypothesis. You should write the literature review in the  present tense  because it is ongoing information.

Methods (Procedures)

This is how I collected and analyzed the information.

This section recounts the procedures of the study. You will write this in  past tense  because you have already completed the study. It must include what is necessary to replicate and validate the hypothesis. What details must the reader know in order to replicate this study? What were your purposes in this study? The challenge in this section is to understand the possible readers well enough to include what is necessary without going into detail on “common-knowledge” procedures. Be sure that you are specific enough about your research procedure that someone in your field could easily replicate your study. Finally, make sure not to report any findings in this section.

This is what I found out from my research.

This section reports the findings from your research. Because this section is about research that is completed, you should write it primarily in the  past tense . The form and level of detail of the results depends on the hypothesis and goals of this report, and the needs of your audience. Authors of research papers often use visuals in the results section, but the visuals should enhance, rather than serve as a substitute, for the narrative of your results. Develop a narrative based on the thesis of the paper and the themes in your results and use visuals to communicate key findings that address your hypothesis or help to answer your research question. Include any unusual findings that will clarify the data. It is a good idea to use subheadings to group the results section into themes to help the reader understand the main points or findings of the research. 

This is what the findings mean in this situation and in terms of the literature more broadly.

This section is your opportunity to explain the importance and implications of your research. What is the significance of this research in terms of the hypothesis? In terms of other studies? What are possible implications for any academic theories you utilized in the study? Are there any policy implications or suggestions that result from the study? Incorporate key studies introduced in the review of literature into your discussion along with your own data from the results section. The discussion section should put your research in conversation with previous research – now you are showing directly how your data complements or contradicts other researchers’ data and what the wider implications of your findings are for academia and society in general. What questions for future research do these findings suggest? Because it is ongoing information, you should write the discussion in the  present tense . Sometimes the results and discussion are combined; if so, be certain to give fair weight to both.

These are the key findings gained from this research.

Summarize the key findings of your research effort in this brief final section. This section should not introduce new information. You can also address any limitations from your research design and suggest further areas of research or possible projects you would complete with a new and improved research design.

References/Works Cited

See KU Writing Center  writing guides  to learn more about different citation styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago.  Make an appointment  at the KU Writing Center for more help. Be sure to format the paper and references based on the citation style that your professor requires or based on the requirements of the academic journal or conference where you hope to submit the paper.

The appendix includes attachments that are pertinent to the main document but are too detailed to be included in the main text. These materials should be titled and labeled (for example Appendix A: Questionnaire). You should refer to the appendix in the text with in-text references so the reader understands additional useful information is available elsewhere in the document. Examples of documents to include in the appendix include regression tables, tables of text analysis data, and interview questions.

Updated June 2022  

The Critical Turkey

Essay Writing Hacks for the Social Sciences

How Can I Be Original in my Essay Writing? Critical Analysis and Original Argument

One of the most sought-after, and yet misunderstood, attributes of a social science essay or dissertation is originality. To achieve a grade in the 90s range here at Edinburgh (that is, an A++, an exceptionally good mark), for example, according to our marking descriptors , your essay needs to display ‘an exceptional degree of insight and independent thought’, ‘flair’, and indeed ‘originality’. Independent analysis and originality, however, should not just be a consideration for the higher grade ranges. Rather, this blogpost suggests to think of it as a scale ranging from complete unoriginality (to be avoided) to very high degrees of originality (to be pursued, but within the  limits of good scholarship). Below are suggestions how to avoid the former, and how to work towards the latter.

‘Original Contribution’ Originality

Let’s start at the very pinnacle of originality, as this will help you understand why originality is such a priced asset in academia, and where this whole thing is coming from. Before you read this section, though, I want to emphasise that this is not what is normally expected from an undergraduate student essay. You can achieve excellent grades without it. You don’t need this even for an A+ (in Edinburgh terms, an 80s essay), it might just be what takes you from an A+ to an A++ (90s). This level of originality means you have come up with what is often referred to as an ‘original contribution’, a genuinely new idea, typically based on some original data (for example from interviews or questionnaires that you have yourself designed, planned and conducted) that adds genuinely new insight and understanding to the body of existing knowledge. This level of originality is a requirement if you are doing a PhD, it certainly helps with your Master’s or Bachelor’s thesis, but is very unusual and not typically expected in standard essay writing. For professional academics, however, originality is a key currency. It’s what gets their research published in prestigious journals, and forms an important part of academic reputation.

This is so you understand where the people who are teaching you, grading your essays, and writing such marking descriptors are coming from. For them, for us, it’s key to what we do. For you, however, certainly up to the level of where you write your dissertation, this kind of originality is not something you typically need to worry about (there might be exceptions, for example if an assignment specifically asks you to come up with an original research idea).

Still, if you want to go for it, do go for it. What you should know, however, is that you can only do this on the basis of really, really knowing the topic you are writing about very, very well. In order to contribute new insights, you need to know what insights already exist. Sometimes you might have an idea that you haven’t read about anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t had that idea first. If it’s already out there, it’s not your original idea, even if you discovered it on your own terms. This means before you can lay claim to your new idea being original, you need to do a lot of reading, and gain a lot of knowledge. Only this extensive knowledge gives you the ability to identify the gaps in the existing knowledge, and whether or not your new idea really does make the contribution you think it makes. In your essay or dissertation, you then also need to explicitly address this, usually through some kind of literature review that summarises the existing ideas and arguments, identifies the gaps of knowledge, and explains how your new idea addresses these gaps.

Sounds tough? It is. And I haven’t even started on how to design your own research project, collect your own data etc. It is indeed beyond the scope of this blogpost. It needs a lot of focus and dedication, and that is why this kind of originality is usually reserved for bigger research projects, in which you have time to do all that digging, and time to do all that original research. For a standard university essay, it means a lot of extra work for marginal gains.

 A more realistic view of originality in undergraduate essays

The good news however, is that the above is only one kind of originality. There is a different kind that can be employed, and that can be used throughout your essay. This is not so much a matter of introducing new data or ideas (ie what you put in your essay), but a question of how you discuss existing information, how you write, how you assemble your argument, how you bring the readings into discussion with each other etc. The focus here indeed shifts from the what to the how .

What to avoid

Let’s start with what you should try to avoid. On this end of the spectrum there is unoriginal writing. This is writing that mostly just repeats what others have written before, with little of your own input or critical discussion. Such an essay will make the usual, obvious points and not add much to it. It can show itself, for example, in entire paragraphs being mere summaries of one of the readings, without integrating it with the essay argument or with other relevant readings. In other cases, there might be integration with other readings or the argument, but only in a way that someone else (another reading or the lecture on the topic) has done before. This re-telling of parts of a lecture is indeed not too uncommon in weaker essays, and at times the exact same references and sometimes even the exact same quotes are used as the lecture does.

For this case especially, a word of warning: This last example is not just unoriginal, it is poor scholarship and potentially plagiarism. You must not just retell the story in the same way someone else has, whether this is the lecture or another reading, pretending it’s your own work.

Avoid, then, mere summaries of readings. And avoid summaries of other people’s summaries of other literature. At best, this type of unoriginality will make the difference between a B and a C (ie it is typically what prevents an essay from reaching the B or 60s level in our marking scheme). At worst, it is plagiarism, and will get you into trouble.

Critical Analysis and Original Argument

How to write in an original way, then? To start with, there are two layers to consider. The first one is critical analysis, the second is original argument. Both are expressed in both the macro-organisation of your essay and the micro-level of how you write.

Critical analysis

I have written in more detail on how to be critical in social science essay writing in this blogpost . Do read it if you want more detail. To summarise the main points, first, you need to critically engage with the literature. This means questioning the assumptions different authors build on, having a closer look at the methodology they use, contextualising them with other studies that have been done on the topic, but also understanding the context in which the work has been produced, and how this might have influenced the author and their motives. Do not misunderstand critical engagement with disagreeing with the author. You might disagree, but there is also such a thing as critical appreciation, in which you agree with someone precisely because you have examined their work in detail, and have found them to be convincing. This, too, demonstrates critical engagement. This first element of critical analysis mostly shows itself on the micro-level of how your write your essay, how you present your ideas and those of others, always with an attention to the details of the studies you present, and an awareness of different interpretations.

Second, critical analysis can mean formulating a critique of the social/political phenomenon you are looking at. This means asking the power question: How does power, and how do hierarchies and inequalities (economic, political, symbolic etc.) show themselves in how, for example, poverty is discussed in media discourses, policy responses to climate change, or the design of school curricula? This second element of critical analysis can play a key part in how you organise your essay on the macro-level, and how you assemble your overall argument. You can thus organise and structure your essay around a key ctitique that puts into focus the role of such power and hierarchy relations.

Original Argument

And this brings me to the point on ‘original argument’. It depends a little on the essay question, but it is almost always a good idea to formulate an argument, an arguable statement relating to the essay question, introduced in the introduction, and serving as a lynchpin throughout your essay. This could be, for example, ‘this essay argues that tabloid media discourses on poverty are deliberately designed by their owners to blame poverty on the poor, and legitimise welfare cuts and a low-tax, low-spend government’, or it could be ‘that the resistance by policy-makers against sustainable policies, particularly in the US, can be explained by the economic power and political influence the fossil fuel industry still holds, both in the form of financing so-called ‘science’, and through lobbying various levels of government’. Or it could be ‘This essay will argue that the way British history is taught, in particular in its ‘small island’ version introduced by the conservative government in English schools, aims at isolating British history from its colonial context, and obscuring the role of colonial exploitation in the development of the modern British state’.

Let’s keep some perspective here. The above examples are very detailed and nuanced thesis statements that you might see in an A+ essay – something you maybe want to strive for, if your ambitions are that way inclined. But even more reduced versions (e.g. ‘I am going to argue that the school curriculum is an expression of still-existing colonial relations’ or ‘poverty discourses serve to legitimise welfare cuts’) will go a long way. The important thing is that whatever your argument is, it should indeed be arguable, that is, one should be able to argue against it. And indeed, as you then proceed to write your essay, you should anticipate various counter-arguments, what someone else might say and what evidence they might use to argue against you. Address these counter-arguments as appropriate, and show why you find them less convincing.

The essay, then, in a macro-sense, can be organised around such an argument. On the micro-level of how this shows itself as you write along, you then need to develop this argument as your essay proceeds. This is done primarily through signposting, adding a sentence or two at the end of each point or paragraph, making the connections between the different points clearer, and how they relate to the argument. Signposting is usually understood as improving the flow of the essay. This is indeed one of its functions. There is another function, however, which is that it actually helps you develop, and bring to the fore, what your argument is. When it finally comes to the conclusion at the end of your essay, you merely need to bring the different strings of the argument together, and put them into context with the essay or research question.

Final Thoughts

Both critical analysis and original argument take you beyond merely reproducing what is already out there. They help you develop your own take on things, and put your own stamp on the essay. They will demonstrate your credentials as an independent, critical thinker. They are the keys that will help you unlock ‘originality’ in your essay.

Part 2 of ‘How to be original’ will go a step further, and suggest two techniques for turbocharging your originality, (a) using case studies and (b) theoretical frameworks. Stay tuned for updates.

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• 9 Ways to Write a More Original Essay to Impress Your Teachers and Improve Your Marks

As a bright student who aspires to the upper echelons of the university league tables and the highest degree classification, you’re naturally going to want your essays to stand out from the crowd.

You should also read…

• How to Write Dazzlingly Brilliant Essays
• 9 Fun and Easy Ways to Improve Your Writing in Your Spare Time

Faced with the same essay question and reading material, it’s likely that there’s going to be a significant degree of conformity among the essays produced by your classmates. Having read the same literature or scholarship, everyone tends to end up writing much the same thing – which must get rather boring for the person marking it! If you want to reach the top marks and impress your teacher or lecturer, as well as developing your own knowledge of the subject and cultivating your capacity for original thinking, you need to start writing more original essays. So how do you make yours a bit different, so that it gets noticed? Here are a few tips to give you some inspiration.

1. Choose an obscure topic

2. Defend a minority opinion

If you can’t find a suitably obscure topic to write about that’s within the limits of the brief you’ve been set, your other option is to argue the case for an opinion that deviates from the standard accepted one. For extra brownie points this could even be your own theory, providing that you have a reasonable amount of evidence to support it, and providing that you also consider other opinions in your essay. Be careful with doing this, as you could risk making a fool of yourself if you choose to defend a widely discredited opinion with lots of evidence stacked against it. If you do choose this tactic, brainstorm all the possible objections or responses to it and pre-empt them in your essay. This way, as the person marking your essay reads through it and starts to think, “But what if…?” or “and how about…?”, you’ll have a response ready and waiting for them. This will show that you’ve thought about it in considerable depth, adding weight to your argument and proving that you’re someone with the intellectual curiosity to explore new ideas.

3. Read obscure scholarship

If you read the same material as everyone else, the chances are fairly high that you’ll end up writing a very similar essay to everyone else. While you should certainly not disregard the material on your reading list – far from it – you can do a little extra reading outside the prescribed literature and impress your teacher or tutor with your additional knowledge. If you’re not sure where to start with finding other things to read, here are some good sources of information and advice: – Your teacher or tutor – the easiest way to get a few extra ideas for additional reading material is to ask your teacher or tutor. They should be willing to provide you with this, and you’ll also score some more brownie points upfront by asking in the first place. A word of warning, though: if you’ve asked for extra reading material, they’ll probably be expecting to see evidence in your essay that you’ve read it! So be careful you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. – Footnotes – these are a great place to look for additional (relevant) reading material by scholars or writers who’ve been cited somewhere in the text, but who may not have been on your original reading list. The author and title of the publication should be included in the footnote, with more details in the bibliography at the back. – Ask the librarian – though the librarian isn’t going to know every single piece of scholarship in the library like the back of their hand, they may be able to point you in the direction of some other publications that may contain relevant material. – Google search – though you should try to avoid using the internet for performing actual research , it could prove useful in locating some scholarship on the subject you’re writing about. If you read a Wikipedia article, the points made in the article should have clickable footnotes for supporting evidence; click on them, and you’ll jump to the bottom of the page for details of where this point came from. Then you just need to look up the book or article, either in the library or online (if you search the title of the publication, you might be able to find a digital version available to read online).

4. Try a different structure

If you’re struggling to find something original to say in the actual content of your essay, you could instead try experimenting with a different structure to the one you imagine your peers will be using. Particularly at A-level, you’ll find that what you’ve learned in class, and the way in which the questions are worded, makes a particular structure suggest itself straightaway. Rather than going with your first inclination, you could perhaps experiment with a different way of structuring it. That doesn’t mean you should dispense with the conventions of an introduction and conclusion, of course. Trying a new structure just means thinking outside the box when it comes to how you deal with the evidence you have available to discuss. Doing something different with the structure should capture the interest of the person marking it – but do make sure it’s for the right reasons, rather than because your argument is all over the place!

5. In English Literature, compare your set text with others

If you’re asked to write an essay about the set text you’re working on, it can be difficult to come up with something original. You and your classmates will probably be regurgitating the same interpretations given to you by your English teacher, and although this is an opportunity to come up with your own original interpretations, it’s not always possible to think of something that hasn’t already been thought of. A possible avenue for writing something a bit more original in this situation is to add in some comparisons with between the set text and other literature of the same author or period, or upon which your set text may have had an influence. For example, say you’re studying Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Unless they’ve been instructed otherwise, your classmates are probably going to stick exclusively to talking about this specific book. So, to be more original, you could bring in other works by Orwell, as well as other dystopian fiction  likely to have been influenced by Orwell. An example of a phrase you might use could be, “This is an idea Orwell had touched on four years previously in Animal Farm …”. Or, “This idea was to have a profound influence on Margaret Atwood, who developed the idea decades later in The Handmaid’s Tale ”. Try not to shoehorn references to other works into your essay just for the sake of it; only include them where it would develop your argument further, or add some context. Done properly, referring to other texts in this way helps make your essay more original at the same time as impressing the person marking it with the breadth of your knowledge.

6. Include photographs, charts and other illustrations

Provided they don’t detract from the words, visual illustrations could be another way to add originality to your essay. While you’ll need to be careful that they don’t come across as trying to divert attention away from an ill-formed argument in the writing itself, illustrations – such as charts, graphs, tables, photographs, diagrams and so on – can be a great way to support the text and make the overall essay more rich and interesting. Carefully thought-out visual features such as these can be an extremely effective way of conveying information, and, if nothing else, will certainly give your teacher or lecturer something of a break in the monotony of essay-marking!

7. Use more advanced language and syntax

Making use of a good vocabulary and employing advanced sentence structures are ways in which you can make your essay more linguistically original. What’s more, rather than aping the written style of whichever author or scholar you happen to be reading at the time, make sure you write in your own voice. That doesn’t mean you should write conversational English; it simply means that you need to find your own tone of voice and communicate confidently in it. The reader needs to feel that you know what you’re talking about, so confident use of language, in particular the effective use of sophisticated words and more advanced syntax, are crucial. Your essay shouldn’t read as though you’ve had a thesaurus next to you while you were writing it and replaced all the simpler words with more complicated ones; but a cleverly delivered under-used word will give a good impression.

8. Use an analogy

This tip may not be applicable to all essays, but one way of making your essay more original is to explain a complex concept using an analogy. An analogy, simply put, is when you compare one thing with another to help explain something. Most students will battle on with trying to explain something with a straightforward definition. However, if you can find a simpler way of explaining it using an analogy, then you may be able to summarise the concept far more effectively. For example, the pressure with which water escapes from a bucket with a hole in it can be used to explain exponential decay in radioactive substances. In both cases, the rate of a consumptive process depends on how much there is left of whatever is being depleted, which results in an exponential rate of decay. Drawing comparisons in this way takes advantage of the reader’s existing knowledge of something else to explain something new to them. Providing your analogy doesn’t become too tenuous, this is a sure-fire way to deliver greater originality in your essay.

9. Give your own opinion

Many students are so absorbed in writing about the opinions of other people that they forget to include anything of their own. This gives you an easy way of making your essay more original than theirs, by including your own opinion. You should avoid using the pronoun “I” too much (the received wisdom is that you should never say it, but there is a time and a place in my view), and your essay shouldn’t revolve around it; but there’s certainly nothing wrong with giving your own intelligent responses to the things you’ve read. Doing so shows a genuine interest in the subject, and it’s unlikely that your classmates will have made such an effort as this. With a little extra effort and thought, it’s relatively easy to make your essay stand out from the crowd. Is it worth putting in this extra elbow grease? Absolutely. You’ll be rewarded with good academic references, a deeper knowledge and, ultimately, better grades.

• SpringerLink shop

Types of journal articles

It is helpful to familiarise yourself with the different types of articles published by journals. Although it may appear there are a large number of types of articles published due to the wide variety of names they are published under, most articles published are one of the following types; Original Research, Review Articles, Short reports or Letters, Case Studies, Methodologies.

Original Research:

This is the most common type of journal manuscript used to publish full reports of data from research. It may be called an  Original Article, Research Article, Research, or just  Article, depending on the journal. The Original Research format is suitable for many different fields and different types of studies. It includes full Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

Short reports or Letters:

These papers communicate brief reports of data from original research that editors believe will be interesting to many researchers, and that will likely stimulate further research in the field. As they are relatively short the format is useful for scientists with results that are time sensitive (for example, those in highly competitive or quickly-changing disciplines). This format often has strict length limits, so some experimental details may not be published until the authors write a full Original Research manuscript. These papers are also sometimes called Brief communications .

Review Articles:

Review Articles provide a comprehensive summary of research on a certain topic, and a perspective on the state of the field and where it is heading. They are often written by leaders in a particular discipline after invitation from the editors of a journal. Reviews are often widely read (for example, by researchers looking for a full introduction to a field) and highly cited. Reviews commonly cite approximately 100 primary research articles.

TIP: If you would like to write a Review but have not been invited by a journal, be sure to check the journal website as some journals to not consider unsolicited Reviews. If the website does not mention whether Reviews are commissioned it is wise to send a pre-submission enquiry letter to the journal editor to propose your Review manuscript before you spend time writing it.  

Case Studies:

These articles report specific instances of interesting phenomena. A goal of Case Studies is to make other researchers aware of the possibility that a specific phenomenon might occur. This type of study is often used in medicine to report the occurrence of previously unknown or emerging pathologies.

Methodologies or Methods

These articles present a new experimental method, test or procedure. The method described may either be completely new, or may offer a better version of an existing method. The article should describe a demonstrable advance on what is currently available.

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How to Begin an Essay: 13 Engaging Strategies

ThoughtCo / Hugo Lin

• 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 effective introductory paragraph both informs and motivates. It lets readers know what your essay is about and it encourages them to keep reading.

There are countless ways to begin an essay effectively. As a start, here are 13 introductory strategies accompanied by examples from a wide range of professional writers.

State Your Thesis Briefly and Directly

But avoid making your thesis a bald announcement, such as "This essay is about...". 

"It is time, at last, to speak the truth about Thanksgiving, and the truth is this. Thanksgiving is really not such a terrific holiday...." (Michael J. Arlen, "Ode to Thanksgiving." The Camera Age: Essays on Television . Penguin, 1982)

Pose a Question Related to Your Subject

Follow up the question with an answer, or an invitation for your readers to answer the question.

"What is the charm of necklaces? Why would anyone put something extra around their neck and then invest it with special significance? A necklace doesn't afford warmth in cold weather, like a scarf, or protection in combat, like chain mail; it only decorates. We might say, it borrows meaning from what it surrounds and sets off, the head with its supremely important material contents, and the face, that register of the soul. When photographers discuss the way in which a photograph reduces the reality it represents, they mention not only the passage from three dimensions to two, but also the selection of a point de vue that favors the top of the body rather than the bottom, and the front rather than the back. The face is the jewel in the crown of the body, and so we give it a setting." (Emily R. Grosholz, "On Necklaces." Prairie Schooner , Summer 2007)

State an Interesting Fact About Your Subject

" The peregrine falcon was brought back from the brink of extinction by a ban on DDT, but also by a peregrine falcon mating hat invented by an ornithologist at Cornell University. If you cannot buy this, Google it. Female falcons had grown dangerously scarce. A few wistful males nevertheless maintained a sort of sexual loitering ground. The hat was imagined, constructed, and then forthrightly worn by the ornithologist as he patrolled this loitering ground, singing, Chee-up! Chee-up! and bowing like an overpolite Japanese Buddhist trying to tell somebody goodbye...." (David James Duncan, "Cherish This Ecstasy." The Sun , July 2008)

Present Your Thesis as a Recent Discovery or Revelation

"I've finally figured out the difference between neat people and sloppy people. The distinction is, as always, moral. Neat people are lazier and meaner than sloppy people." (Suzanne Britt Jordan, "Neat People vs. Sloppy People." Show and Tell . Morning Owl Press, 1983)

Briefly Describe the Primary Setting of Your Essay

"It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two." (George Orwell, "A Hanging," 1931)

Recount an Incident That Dramatizes Your Subject

"One October afternoon three years ago while I was visiting my parents, my mother made a request I dreaded and longed to fulfill. She had just poured me a cup of Earl Grey from her Japanese iron teapot, shaped like a little pumpkin; outside, two cardinals splashed in the birdbath in the weak Connecticut sunlight. Her white hair was gathered at the nape of her neck, and her voice was low. “Please help me get Jeff’s pacemaker turned off,” she said, using my father’s first name. I nodded, and my heart knocked." (Katy Butler, "What Broke My Father's Heart." The New York Times Magazine , June 18, 2010)

Use the Narrative Strategy of Delay

The narrative strategy of delay allows you to put off identifying your subject just long enough to pique your readers' interest without frustrating them. 

"They woof. Though I have photographed them before, I have never heard them speak, for they are mostly silent birds. Lacking a syrinx, the avian equivalent of the human larynx, they are incapable of song. According to field guides the only sounds they make are grunts and hisses, though the Hawk Conservancy in the United Kingdom reports that adults may utter a croaking coo and that young black vultures, when annoyed, emit a kind of immature snarl...." (Lee Zacharias, "Buzzards." Southern Humanities Review , 2007)

Use the Historical Present Tense

An effective method of beginning an essay is to use historical present tense to relate an incident from the past as if it were happening now. 

"Ben and I are sitting side by side in the very back of his mother’s station wagon. We face glowing white headlights of cars following us, our sneakers pressed against the back hatch door. This is our joy—his and mine—to sit turned away from our moms and dads in this place that feels like a secret, as though they are not even in the car with us. They have just taken us out to dinner, and now we are driving home. Years from this evening, I won’t actually be sure that this boy sitting beside me is named Ben. But that doesn’t matter tonight. What I know for certain right now is that I love him, and I need to tell him this fact before we return to our separate houses, next door to each other. We are both five." (Ryan Van Meter, "First." The Gettysburg Review , Winter 2008)

Briefly Describe a Process That Leads Into Your Subject

"I like to take my time when I pronounce someone dead. The bare-minimum requirement is one minute with a stethoscope pressed to someone’s chest, listening for a sound that is not there; with my fingers bearing down on the side of someone’s neck, feeling for an absent pulse; with a flashlight beamed into someone’s fixed and dilated pupils, waiting for the constriction that will not come. If I’m in a hurry, I can do all of these in sixty seconds, but when I have the time, I like to take a minute with each task." (Jane Churchon, "The Dead Book." The Sun , February 2009)

Reveal a Secret or Make a Candid Observation

"I spy on my patients. Ought not a doctor to observe his patients by any means and from any stance, that he might the more fully assemble evidence? So I stand in doorways of hospital rooms and gaze. Oh, it is not all that furtive an act. Those in bed need only look up to discover me. But they never do." ( Richard Selzer , "The Discus Thrower." Confessions of a Knife . Simon & Schuster, 1979)

Open with a Riddle, Joke, or Humorous Quotation

You can use a riddle , joke, or humorous quotation to reveal something about your subject. 

" Q: What did Eve say to Adam on being expelled from the Garden of Eden? A: 'I think we're in a time of transition.' The irony of this joke is not lost as we begin a new century and anxieties about social change seem rife. The implication of this message, covering the first of many periods of transition, is that change is normal; there is, in fact, no era or society in which change is not a permanent feature of the social landscape...." (Betty G. Farrell, Family: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture . Westview Press, 1999)

Offer a Contrast Between Past and Present

"As a child, I was made to look out the window of a moving car and appreciate the beautiful scenery, with the result that now I don't care much for nature. I prefer parks, ones with radios going chuckawaka chuckawaka and the delicious whiff of bratwurst and cigarette smoke." (Garrison Keillor, "Walking Down The Canyon." Time , July 31, 2000)

Offer a Contrast Between Image and Reality

A compelling essay can begin with a contrast between a common misconception and the opposing truth. 

"They aren’t what most people think they are. Human eyes, touted as ethereal objects by poets and novelists throughout history, are nothing more than white spheres, somewhat larger than your average marble, covered by a leather-like tissue known as sclera and filled with nature’s facsimile of Jell-O. Your beloved’s eyes may pierce your heart, but in all likelihood they closely resemble the eyes of every other person on the planet. At least I hope they do, for otherwise he or she suffers from severe myopia (near-sightedness), hyperopia (far-sightedness), or worse...." (John Gamel, "The Elegant Eye." Alaska Quarterly Review , 2009)

• 'Whack at Your Reader at Once': Eight Great Opening Lines
• What Is a Compelling Introduction?
• How to Structure an Essay
• Writing a Descriptive Essay
• Hookers vs. Chasers: How Not to Begin an Essay
• Development in Composition: Building an Essay
• Examples of Great Introductory Paragraphs
• How To Write an Essay
• How to Write a Good Thesis Statement
• How to Write a Great Essay for the TOEFL or TOEIC
• Write an Attention-Grabbing Opening Sentence for an Essay
• How to Develop and Organize a Classification Essay
• Contrast Composition and Rhetoric
• 6 Steps to Writing the Perfect Personal Essay
• A Guide to Using Quotations in Essays
• What Is Expository Writing?

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What is an original research article?

An original research article is a report of research activity that is written by the researchers who conducted the research or experiment. Original research articles may also be referred to as: “primary research articles” or “primary scientific literature.” In science courses, instructors may also refer to these as “peer-reviewed articles” or “refereed articles.”

Original research articles in the sciences have a specific purpose, follow a scientific article format, are peer reviewed, and published in academic journals.

Identifying Original Research: What to Look For

An "original research article" is an article that is reporting original research about new data or theories that have not been previously published. That might be the results of new experiments, or newly derived models or simulations. The article will include a detailed description of the methods used to produce them, so that other researchers can verify them. This description is often found in a section called "methods" or "materials and methods" or similar. Similarly, the results will generally be described in great detail, often in a section called "results."

Since the original research article is reporting the results of new research, the authors should be the scientists who conducted that research. They will have expertise in the field, and will usually be employed by a university or research lab.

In comparison, a newspaper or magazine article (such as in  The New York Times  or  National Geographic ) will usually be written by a journalist reporting on the actions of someone else.

An original research article will be written by and for scientists who study related topics. As such, the article should use precise, technical language to ensure that other researchers have an exact understanding of what was done, how to do it, and why it matters. There will be plentiful citations to previous work, helping place the research article in a broader context. The article will be published in an academic journal, follow a scientific format, and undergo peer-review.

Original research articles in the sciences follow the scientific format. ( This tutorial from North Carolina State University illustrates some of the key features of this format.)

Look for signs of this format in the subject headings or subsections of the article. You should see the following:

Scientific research that is published in academic journals undergoes a process called "peer review."

The peer review process goes like this:

• A researcher writes a paper and sends it in to an academic journal, where it is read by an editor
• The editor then sends the article to other scientists who study similar topics, who can best evaluate the article
• The scientists/reviewers examine the article's research methodology, reasoning, originality, and sginificance
• The scientists/reviewers then make suggestions and comments to impove the paper
• The original author is then given these suggestions and comments, and makes changes as needed
• This process repeats until everyone is satisfied and the article can be published within the academic journal

For more details about this process see the Peer Reviewed Publications guide.

This journal article  is an example. It was published in the journal  Royal Society Open Science  in 2015. Clicking on the button that says "Review History" will show the comments by the editors, reviewers and the author as it went through the peer review process. The "About Us" menu provides details about this journal; "About the journal" under that tab includes the statement that the journal is peer reviewed.

Review articles

There are a variety of article types published in academic, peer-reviewed journals, but the two most common are original research articles and review articles . They can look very similar, but have different purposes and structures.

Like original research articles, review articles are aimed at scientists and undergo peer-review. Review articles often even have “abstract,” “introduction,” and “reference” sections. However, they will not (generally) have a “methods” or “results” section because they are not reporting new data or theories. Instead, they review the current state of knowledge on a topic.

Press releases, newspaper or magazine articles

These won't be in a formal scientific format or be peer reviewed. The author will usually be a journalist, and the audience will be the general public. Since most readers are not interested in the precise details of the research, the language will usually be nontechnical and broad. Citations will be rare or nonexistent.

Tips for Finding Original research Articles

Search for articles in one of the library databases recommend for your subject area . If you are using Google, try searching in Google Scholar instead and you will get results that are more likely to be original research articles than what will come up in a regular Google search!

For tips on using library databases to find articles, see our Library DIY guides .

Tips for Finding the Source of a News Report about Science

If you've seen or heard a report about a new scientific finding or claim, these tips can help you find the original source:

• Often, the report will mention where the original research was published; look for sentences like "In an article published yesterday in the journal  Nature ..." You can use this to find the issue of the journal where the research was published, and look at the table of contents to find the original article.
• The report will often name the researchers involved. You can search relevant databases for their name and the topic of the report to find the original research that way.
• Sometimes you may have to go through multiple articles to find the original source. For example, a video or blog post may be based on a newspaper article, which in turn is reporting on a scientific discovery published in another journal; be sure to find the original research article.
• Don't be afraid to ask a librarian for help!

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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code

Writing "Original" Papers

Some writing assignments you receive at Harvard will explicitly ask you to present an "original" thesis, claim, or idea. But even when the word "original" isn't mentioned, you should assume that your professor expects you to develop a thesis that is the product of your own thinking and not something drawn directly from a source and planted in your paper. Occasionally an assignment will require only a summary of your reading, particularly if the instructor wants to make sure you have understood a particularly complex concept; however, some assignments may be worded in a way that leaves expectations ambiguous (you may be asked, for example, to "discuss" or "consider" a source), and you may think you are only expected to summarize when, in fact, you are expected to make an argument. When in doubt about whether you are supposed to make an argument in your paper, always check with your instructor to make sure you understand what you're expected to do.

The expectation that you will say something original in every college paper may seem daunting. After all, how can you, an undergraduate who has been studying a particular subject for as little as one semester, know enough to make an original contribution to a field that your professor may have spent a career studying? Indeed, it would be impossible for you to come up with an idea for every paper you write that no one has ever thought of before, and your instructors realize this. When they ask you to come up with an original idea, they may be signaling different expectations, depending on the context of the assignment. Below, you'll find a general framework for thinking about originality in different situations you will encounter in college.

Writing situation #1: Short non-research papers

In the context of certain assignments, it's enough to come up with a thesis that's original to you—a thesis that you arrived at after thinking about the material you read, rather than an idea you encountered in one of the assigned sources. This will be true for the papers you write in Expos, as well as for many of the short papers you write in your Gen Ed and concentration courses. For these papers, your instructor does not expect you to come up with an idea that no one else has ever written about. Rather, for these types of assignments, your instructor is most interested in your thought process, your analytical skills, and the way you explain why you think what you think. But why, you may be wondering, would anyone bother writing a paper that presents an idea that other scholars have written about already?

Here's the short answer to that question: There is real value in discovering an idea for yourself, selecting the best evidence to support it, and taking the necessary steps to argue for it. Not only does this process allow you to show your professor that you are capable of sophisticated thought, it also helps you learn both what you think about a topic or issue and how to think through a problem or set of problems. This kind of thinking is necessary preparation for the longer projects you'll do later in your college career when you will be expected to say something truly original. It's impossible to tackle those projects—from a senior thesis to original lab research—if you haven't had the experience of arriving at an idea, fleshing out an argument, and presenting it to an audience. This preparation will serve you well as your college coursework becomes more specialized, and it will also benefit you when you leave college. Whether you go into business, law, education, medicine, or another field, you'll find yourself in circumstances in which your analysis of a particular problem, and your use of sources to solve that problem, will be crucial to your success.

While the specifics of the assignments for short papers will vary, remember that whenever you're asked to make a claim, you're expected to do your own thinking. In other words, writing a paper about a claim that has been worked over in class, in section, or in your readings will not leave you room to do much thinking of your own. Nor will writing a paper about a claim that will strike your readers as patently obvious, simple, and unarguable. If you are interested in an idea that has come up in class, or one that seems obvious, you should work on extending or complicating this idea, or coming up with a counterargument that changes the way the idea should be considered. Also, keep in mind that when your instructors tell you not to consult outside sources, they are often doing so precisely to encourage your original thinking, and you should heed their instructions. When an assignment specifies that you avoid outside sources, you should generally take this to mean that you should not do any outside reading in preparation for the assignment, including even just a quick Web search for background on a topic.

Writing Situation #2: Short research papers and term papers

When you are assigned a research paper or term paper for a course, you will often be asked to write 10-20 pages in which you respond in some way to sources you identify and locate yourself . As with the shorter papers you write for your courses you will generally not be expected to come up with an idea that has never been considered before (although your instructors will certainly be pleased if you do). So how will you know if your idea is original enough?

The key to answering this question is to think carefully about the context of the course and to decide what's reasonable for you to do given the scope of the assignment. For example, if you've been asked to find five sources of your own, your paper will not be original enough if your argument simply echoes one of these sources, or if it echoes a source that was actually assigned in class. On the other hand, if you locate three sources, each of which offers different answers to the same question, your paper will be original if you can make your own argument for which answer makes the most sense and why.

Your argument will not, however, be original enough if you make the same argument as one of the sources without acknowledging why that source is stronger than the others. For example, if you were writing about race in Brazil, and you were asked to read and consider two opposing theories on the topic, you might agree with one theory and then present your argument for why it is the stronger idea. Or you might decide that both theories fall short, as Ron Serko does in the 2008-2009 issue of Exposé. Serko lays out the theories he's considering in his first paragraph and then stakes out his own position in paragraph two when he writes, "The reality of race in Brazil does not precisely fit either of these theories, however. Rather, I argue that the system of race in Brazil follows a roughly bipolar model, and the two poles are white and nonwhite"(105). Serko goes on to explain what he sees as the flaws in the opposing theories and to provide evidence for his own interpretation. The result is a paper that does not simply restate the position of one of his sources but, rather, uses those sources to inform his own thinking.

When you are undertaking research in a field, it's always a good idea to check in with your instructor to make sure that you are not overlooking important work in that field and that the sources you are choosing are significant and appropriate for your project.

Writing Situation #3: The junior tutorial paper and the senior thesis

When you write a substantial piece of work that takes a semester or more (like a junior tutorial paper or a senior thesis), the expectations for originality are different because of the length of the essay you'll write and because of your assumed expertise in the field. As you gain experience in your concentration, your knowledge of the major ideas in your chosen field will expand, you will develop your ability to ask more rigorous questions in that field, and you will be able to answer those questions in ways that are original not just to you but to your readers. At this point in your college career, you'll have had the opportunity to learn who the major thinkers are in your field and how to identify the important literature on what research has taken place on your topic. You'll be able to find the most important current scholarship on a topic or the most recent findings related to your research question. Your expertise, along with the time you'll have to devote to the project, means that you will be well-equipped to say something original about your topic.

Even when you write these longer papers, it's still important to understand what it means to say something original. Academic work is very specialized, and scholars build theories and ideas based on the knowledge and ideas that they have studied. In practical terms, this means that ideas evolve slowly, and every original idea doesn't have to be as groundbreaking as E=mc2 or Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." While there's nothing wrong with hoping to discover a new element to add to the periodic table or to figure out the true identity of Shakespeare, it's more likely that your ideas will be original in any of the following ways:

You might discover, in your study of a particular topic, that no one has considered a question or problem that interests you. Or you might be interested in a question that has been asked before, but decide to use a text or series of texts to answer that question in a new way. For example, you might look at newly released government documents to consider a question about how the Reagan administration shaped economic policies. While the question may have been asked before, the newly available data will allow you to provide a fresh, original perspective. Similarly, for a senior thesis in a lab science or social science concentration, you might collect and analyze your own data in pursuit of an answer to a question that other scholars have attempted to answer before with different types of data. In psychology, for example, you might conduct an experiment under the supervision of a professor and then analyze your data. In a sociology or anthropology course, you might conduct a series of interviews and analyze them in order to answer a question in a new way.

As appealing as it might seem to discover an entirely new idea, it's just as valuable to add a new step or a new way of thinking to an idea that someone else has already presented by considering new data, or, alternatively, to refute an idea by pointing out a new way of looking at the existing data. It's also valuable—and original—to consider ideas in relation to each other that have not been considered or connected to each other in this way before.

Whether you're working on a short assignment or a semester-long project, remember that even in the context of all the thinking that has come before yours, you are always capable of injecting your own unique point of view into a paper. In fact, you're doing your own thinking all the time, long before you start writing—in class discussion, in the dining hall, and in your instructor's office hours. When you bring sources into the equation, you're able to go beyond your gut reactions and feelings ("capitalism is good") to develop more nuanced ideas ("capitalism does a better job of creating incentives for innovation than other systems" or "a capitalist society protects human rights better than other societies"). Sources also allow you to gain access to competing arguments and interpretations, and help to lay the groundwork for your own thinking. When you read what has already been written on a particular topic, or when you analyze data that has already been produced in addition to new data, you become more qualified to contribute to the conversation.

Many students tackling college-level writing for the first time find the expectations of college writing new and difficult. There are resources to help you as you embark on your writing assignments at Harvard, and you should feel free to make use of them. Writing Center tutors , Departmental Writing Fellows , and House tutors are all excellent resources. The Harvard Writing Project publishes a number of guides to writing in different fields, and the Writing Center offers  general writing resources in addition to individual conferences.

Before you can use sources effectively, you need to know how to locate them, how to know if they are reliable, and how to distinguish clearly between the ideas in a source and your own ideas. The information on this site provides an introduction to the research process, including how and where to find sources , how to decide if a source is reliable and useful , how to use sources accurately and effectively  in your papers both to strengthen your own thinking and writing and to avoid plagiarism, and finally, how to integrate source material  into your writing and how to cite sources responsibly .

Being Controversial

Using Sources Beyond Harvard

Writing in Business

Writing in Law

Writing in Medicine  

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8 Daily Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I.

The suit, which accuses the tech companies of copyright infringement, adds to the fight over the online data used to power artificial intelligence.

• Share full article

By Katie Robertson

Eight daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Tuesday, accusing the tech companies of illegally using news articles to power their A.I. chatbots.

The publications — The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel of Florida, The San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register and The St. Paul Pioneer Press — filed the complaint in federal court in the U.S. Southern District of New York. All are owned by MediaNews Group or Tribune Publishing, subsidiaries of Alden, the country’s second-largest newspaper operator.

In the complaint, the publications accuse OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of copyrighted articles without permission to train and feed their generative A.I. products, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. The lawsuit does not demand specific monetary damages, but it asks for a jury trial and said the publishers were owed compensation from the use of the content.

The complaint said the chatbots regularly surfaced the entire text of articles behind subscription paywalls for users and often did not prominently link back to the source. This, it said, reduced the need for readers to pay subscriptions to support local newspapers and deprived the publishers of revenue both from subscriptions and from licensing their content elsewhere.

“We’ve spent billions of dollars gathering information and reporting news at our publications, and we can’t allow OpenAI and Microsoft to expand the Big Tech playbook of stealing our work to build their own businesses at our expense,” Frank Pine, the executive editor overseeing Alden’s newspapers, said in a statement.

An OpenAI spokeswoman said in a statement that the company was “not previously aware” of Alden’s concerns but was engaged in partnerships and conversations with many news organizations to explore opportunities.

“Along with our news partners, we see immense potential for A.I. tools like ChatGPT to deepen publishers’ relationships with readers and enhance the news experience,” she said.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

The lawsuit adds to a fight over the use of data to power generative A.I. Online information, including articles, Wikipedia posts and other data, has increasingly become the lifeblood of the booming industry. A recent investigation by The New York Times found that numerous tech companies, in their push to keep pace, had ignored policies and debated skirting copyright law in an effort to obtain as much data as possible to train chatbots.

Publishers have paid attention to the use of their content. In December, The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of using copyrighted articles to train chatbots that then competed with the paper as a source of news and information. Microsoft has sought to have parts of that lawsuit dismissed . It also argued that The Times had not shown actual harm and that the large language models that drive chatbots had not replaced the market for news articles. OpenAI has filed a similar argument.

Other publications have sought to make deals with the tech companies for compensation. The Financial Times, which is owned by the Japanese company Nikkei, said on Monday that it had reached a deal with OpenAI to allow it to use Financial Times content to train its AI chatbots. The Financial Times did not disclose the terms of the deal.

OpenAI has also struck agreements with Axel Springer, the German publishing giant that owns Business Insider and Politico; The Associated Press ; and Le Monde, the French news outlet.

The lawsuit from the Alden newspapers, filed by the law firm Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck, accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of copyright infringement, unfair competition by misappropriation and trademark dilution. The newspapers say the chatbots falsely credited the publications for inaccurate or misleading reporting, “tarnishing the newspapers’ reputations and spreading dangerous information.”

One example included ChatGPT’s response to a query about which infant lounger The Chicago Tribune recommended. ChatGPT, according to the complaint, responded that The Tribune recommended the Boppy Newborn Lounger, a product that was recalled after it was linked to infant deaths and that the newspaper had never recommended.

In a separate incident, an A.I. chatbot claimed that The Denver Post had published research indicating that smoking could potentially cure asthma, a complete fabrication, the complaint said.

“This issue is not just a business problem for a handful of newspapers or the newspaper industry at large,” the lawsuit said. “It is a critical issue for civic life in America.”

Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email:  [email protected]   More about Katie Robertson

Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

News  and Analysis

Eight daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital sued OpenAI and Microsoft , accusing the tech companies of illegally using news articles to power their A.I. chatbots.

The spending that the tech industry’s giants expect A.I. to require, for the chips and data centers , is starting to come into focus — and it is jarringly large.

The table stakes for A.I. start-ups to compete with the likes of Microsoft and Google are in the billions of dollars. And even that may not be enough .

The Age of A.I.

A new category of apps promises to relieve parents of drudgery, with an assist from A.I . But a family’s grunt work is more human, and valuable, than it seems.

Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s hope for Meta’s A.I. assistant to be the smartest , it struggles with facts, numbers and web search.

Much as ChatGPT generates poetry, a new A.I. system devises blueprints for microscopic mechanisms  that can edit your DNA.

Could A.I. change India’s elections? Avatars are addressing voters by name, in whichever of India’s many languages they speak. Experts see potential for misuse  in a country already rife with disinformation.

Which A.I. system writes the best computer code or generates the most realistic image? Right now, there’s no easy way to answer those questions, our technology columnist writes .