With the purpose of describing the rhetorical preferences in composition, a field that has not received adequate attention in genre research, this article reports on an exploratory analysis of the moves and steps that make up research article introductions in the journals "Written Communication" and "Journal of Second Language Writing" using Swales' (2004) "Create-A-Research-Space" (CARS) model. The detailed move/step analysis reveals that Move 2, establishing a niche, is the least frequently occurring move, and its absence is compensated with another step, territorial justification, under Move 1. It appears that the authors make the necessary narrowing down from background information to the announcement of their study with the help of territorial justification. The explanation that composition is an emergent, young, and interdisciplinary field can account for the missing Move 2. Another interesting hypothesis for the missing Move 2 in introduction is the interdisciplinary nature of composition. Besides discussing possible explanations for the missing Move 2 and its compensation with the new step, territorial justification, this study reminds students and scholars to be open to adopting new strategies to maintain coherence and be persuasive when they find the established disciplinary discourses too narrow or limiting for their purposes.