According to John Swales, a linguist, the introductions in all academic journal articles contain four rhetorical moves. Scholars use these moves to develop a context for their work. Although the order of these moves can vary, in general, the first move is to announce the importance of the research topic. A second move is to review and summarize previous research relevant to their work. Third, they show a problem, or a “gap,” in the previous research, thus making room for their own research. Finally, scientists present their own work as filling that gap or resolving that problem.

Most writing in the university is an argument. That is, it attempts to persuade others about something, whether it's as complex as the Iraq war or as common as which brand of clothes to buy. The difference between argument and research is that research is an argument that includes collecting data concerning a question or problem, interpreting the data, and generating theories, or arguments about the question/problem, in a systematic manner.

Communication can be broken down into the two categories of informing and arguing. Generally speaking, informing is communicating about something that there is no disagreement on, while argument is an attempt to persuade someone to take some action or to believe something. For instance, giving a classmate the address to the class home page would be informing, while telling a classmate that the design of one home page was better than another would be the beginning of an argument, an attempt to persuade the classmate. It's the beginning because to be an argument, one needs not only the claim concerning the homepages but also the reasoning for the evaluation of the homepages.