Research Reports - ? for Engineers

[indieFan]

Hi,

I'm currently writing a research paper on rapid prototyping. Unfortunately, with my original background in English, I have a tendency to want to define words as an opening paragraph. Therefore, my question is:

Is it inappropriate to quote the dictionary definitions of "rapid" and "prototype" in the opening paragraph of the introduction of a research paper?

Thanks,
indieFan

[rbayer]

In this case, it really depends on what the subject of your paper is. Are you simply informing the reader of what rapid prototyping is? Or are you showing its bennefits to the engineering process? These would be two very different papers, which would therefore require very different intros.

The the following two examples, for instance (both from past research papers I've written).

First, the intro from my paper trying to define what "freedom" is:

“The state or quality of being free…”(McKechnie 730). This is the definition the dictionary gives for the word “freedom” before continuing on for another half-column of specific examples. This cryptic sentence is the best that scholars of English could come up with, yet it is still nebulous, non-descript, and fails to capture the essence of “freedom.” The best way to find a good definition for the word is to trace its meaning over the past several hundred years. When doing this, we can see that while the specific applications of “freedom” may have changed over time, the underlying beliefs and meanings have remained constant.

And the second, from a paper on the bennefits of open-source (in this paper, I defined open-source in my first body paragraph):

“Mr. Jones, are we ready to release our new software? As requested, it’s full of bugs, which means people will be forced to upgrade for years. Outstanding!” While these lines are taken from the James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, there are eerie similarities to the way many people believe Microsoft and other software developers function. The solution, here, would be simple: move to an open-source development model in which the software is maintained, free of charge, by the general public. Open-source will produce higher quality software while still maintaining, or possibly even improving, the profit margin of the developers.

Basically, my advice would be to figure out what you're trying to prove with your paper and write and intro based off that.

--Rob