Not at all. There are many ways to let an audience decide whether the rest of the material is worth their time. Summarizing to give them a preview is only one (

Not at all. There are many ways to let an audience decide whether the rest of the material is worth their time. Summarizing to give them a preview is only one (and often the least interesting one). Other ways: * Describe a problem that the audience also has, so that they understand that you are aligned with them. * Tell an engaging anecdote so that they expect it will be a rewarding experience. (The idea that a piece of writing should entertain, inform, or persuade and that those are mutually exclusive is another canard that I find to be completely toxic and antithetical to good writing. Good writing should entertain, inform, and persuade.) * Telegraph that the time investment will be smaller by getting started and making the overall thing shorter. * Describe previous failures to solve a problem. * Give them an interesting insight right off the bat, which implies there may be more to come. * Tell them something personal which conveys whether you are likely to be a person with interesting things to say. * Throw out a detailed, hard to acquire fact, which implies that you have other hard-won knowledge. Note that what all of these have in common is that the intro material is unique and is not simply a pre-statement of information they will encounter lately. Also, the fact that I made step 3 optional is significant. Most writing and presentations don't need a summary and a summary will often detract. If you want to stick in the audience's memory, what you really need is a climax, and "here's what I just said, said again" is about the most anti-climactic ending you can imagine.