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A lead paragraph (sometimes shortened to lead; in the United States sometimes spelled lede) is the opening paragraph of an article, book chapter, or other written work that summarizes its main ideas. [1] Styles vary widely among the different types and genres of publications, from journalistic news-style leads to a more encyclopaedic variety.
In Wikipedia, the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents. It is located at the beginning of the article, before the table of contents and the first heading. It is not a news-style lead or "lede" paragraph. The average Wikipedia visit is a few minutes long. [1]
The lead's job is not to sum up the topic, as understood elsewhere, but to sum up the article, regardless of how incomplete the article might be. If the lead does not sum up the topic, then the article should be improved first so it does sum up the topic. Then the lead can be tweaked so it finally does sum up the topic.
Single-sentence paragraphs can inhibit the flow of the text; by the same token, long paragraphs become hard to read. Between paragraphs—as between sections—there should be only a single blank line. First lines are not indented. Bullet points should not be used in the lead of an article. They may be used in the body to break up a mass of ...
For example, the Cleopatra article (which I picked because it's among the most-viewed FAs) has a 690-word lead, out of a total readable prose size of about 13,000 words, so the lead is just a little over 5% of the total prose size. This falls right into the 4-10% range mentioned above.
In a lead and an article of this size, I think the lead should be a summary of article content without citations or inline links to other articles - want more info, look at the table of contents and/or click on the inline link to read the section in the body with the citations and the links to other articles (yeah, when pigs fly).
Kids also tend to put things in their mouths, raising the risk that they'll swallow things that contain or are coated with lead, such as contaminated soil, dust or flakes from paint, per the WHO.
Other styles are also used in news writing, including the "anecdotal lead", which begins the story with an eye-catching tale or anecdote rather than the central facts; and the Q&A, or question-and-answer format. The inverted pyramid may also include a "hook" as a kind of prologue, typically a provocative quote, question, or image, to entice the ...