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Introduction
Umberto Eco is a professional writer. His introductions catch the reader's attention, are wonderfully coherent. He carries the reader with him from the first sentence to the last. He knows -- quoting William Zinsser -- that writing well means "believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel" (238). Although we can find similarities in the structure of his essays, even discover a strong tie between the titles and first sentences, it is only Eco's personality that makes his writings so vivid. Still, in this paper, I was eager to discover the secret of Umberto Eco's introductions.

Method
For my study, I selected the first six essays in Eco's How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays. These essays deal with problems arising during journeys, and reveal some nonsense of the modern world. In some, Eco offers real advice to solve these problems, but mostly he only illustrates them, and gives an ironic picture. All of them are personal descriptions, with a first person narrator re-appearing.

I analysed the first sentences of each introduction syntactically. I defined a key word, or key expression in them, and then compared it to the key words in the title. I wanted to explore how these key words influence the subject and structure of the rest of the text. I analysed the titles, too, because in most cases the introductions concealed the connection between the title and subject.

Results and Discussion
All of Eco's essays build around a key word given in the title: eating in flight, travelling with a salmon, and replacing a driving licence. The introductory sentence lists other key expressions. So the title and the first sentence constitute a crucial unit which determines the content of the essays.

The essay "How to Travel with a Salmon" starts with "according to newspapers" (1). This hint, or reference to newspapers, offers the reader a clear standpoint. The introduction presupposes an essay about the problems of the modern world, definitely something sincere. Still, Eco turns out to write about his adventures with a smoked salmon. He buys it in Stockholm, and attempts to keep it refrigitated during his journey. The key expressions, "the invasion of the computer" and "the alarming expansion of the Third World" (1), appear only at the end of the first sentence. Around these problems is the whole salmon-incident constructed, as these cause every misunderstanding. The expanding Third World refers to the hotel staff, and the newly-installed computer-system as the other worldwide problem also invaded Eco's accommodation.
The next essay, "How to Replace a Driver's Licence", gives a definite point of time for the events. Eco does define not only the date, but also names the city: Amsterdam. The main clause, which describes the source of problems, comes only after these specifications are given. This source is the loss of Eco's wallet, as he writes about his own experience and speaks in the first person singular. He tells us about replacing his documents and cards that were lost or stolen together with his driving licence. The key word of the essay, driving licence, however, appears only in the fourth paragraph that begins listing the difficulties -- his suffering with many different offices and officers. Thus the first part is constructed upon the content of the lost wallet, the second part deals with the licence exclusively, referring to the title.

The essay "How to Eat in Flight" portays Eco's journey, and also gives information about its date and setting -- "a few years ago", "round trip to Amsterdam" -- before the key verb "cost" (13). Trademarks of shirts, slacks, and coats make the language concrete. This essay also hides the title's key word until the second paragraph. Nevertheless, the word "eat" in the title suggests that the food served in the air caused the damage in the writer's clothes. Eco writes about the illogical way of serving spot-making foods on planes, instead of compact dishes. Here, Eco makes a generalisation, extending his own experience to every airline.

The fourth essay, "How to Go Through Customs", does not name the date and setting of the events, but an Italian artist's trademark appears again: Cellini's. Eco depicts a murder -- he kills one of his mistresses in the essay --, so further details would be shocking. Speaking in the name of a criminal is shocking in itself. The main clause describing the murder comes after some ordinary information about circumstances are given. So Eco achieves a much greater effect than he would by starting the sentence with "I did away with my partner" (17). This essay consists of two parts. The first describes how easily Eco goes through the customs carrying illegally morphine, cocaine, and a corpse; the other lists the difficulties of a perfectly honest traveller going through customs.

The illnesses and diseases listed make the fifth essay, "How to Travel on American Trains", concrete. This sentence is unique as it starts with the subject and predicate immediately: "you can undertake". The "air journey" (20) is linked with the title's "American trains". The next sentence reveals that Eco has a cold, the only illness which makes traveling by air impossible, and this forces him to travel by train. So the essay turns into a description of American trains.
In the last essay, Eco refers to mass media again, as in "How to Travel with a Salmon": he mentions political and literary weeklies. This time, however, the media does not seem a reliable source. This is the only essay where the title's key word re-appears in the first sentence. The word "intelligent" prevails in it; it occurs three times, giving the word mocking, unpleasant overtones. This suggests that Eco treats the custom of recommending intelligent books for intelligent vacations ironically. Still, Eco himself gives advice to those longing for an intelligent vacation, but his advice mocks this "familiar custom" (24). The books he recommends bore most readers, are hidden in ancient libraries, and consist of at least 20 volumes.

Conclusion
As shown in these six essays, Umberto Eco determines the structure and content of his essays by the title and the first sentence. In this way, he informs his readers what they can expect. This method, however, does not apply to every turn in the essay; Eco leaves a door open to new ideas, to surprise. We cannot predict from his introduction and title that the essay "How to Travel on American Trains" turns to the subject of smoking. He leaves this kind of surprise to the conclusions. To understand the structure of Eco's essays would be worth analysing the conclusions, as the introduction and the ending co-operates and forms a framework for the text. But that would require another research paper.