The phrase "a sort of primer" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to a basic introduction or guide to a particular subject or topic.
Example: "This book serves as a sort of primer for beginners who want to learn about digital marketing."
Alternatives: "a type of introduction" or "a kind of guide".
They amounted to a sort of primer, if you were seeking a grip on the new abstract, improvised electronic music.
Consider this week's recipe as a sort of primer for an easy home-cooked stovetop and oven version.
Mr. Paschal, who is black and worked as a loan officer in Wells Fargo's office in Annandale, Va., from 1997 to 2007, offers a sort of primer on Wells Fargo's subprime marketing strategy by race.
Her words have acted as a sort of primer for her performance as Joy Mangano, a woman boxed in by circumstance but refusing to let societal restrictions stop her from aiming upwards.
It amounts to a sort of primer on the work, left largely unfinished at Mozart's death in 1791, and on various attempts to complete it, or parts of it.
At the Whitechapel, models, maquettes and sculptures based on the piratical theme of LaLa Land Parody Paradise are displayed alongside earlier works by the artist, which provide a sort of primer to almost four decades of an art obsessed with the body, with sexuality and power.
Under other circumstances it might be relevant to have one general set of primers targeting a certain transcription factor such that the same primer set would amplify the correct target in several different species; a sort of orthogonal primer design problem.
Our family bible was not the Bible but Mark Lane's "Rush to Judgment," a sort of conspiracy primer on the assassination.
"It's really a shame that the original intent can't be carried over from the old Hebrew". One of his discoveries in doing the project, Crumb said, was that Genesis can be read as a sort of Bronze Age primer on male-female relations.
In the course of a show, the lighting and video guys would have some sort of primer on what was happening [in a performer's set].
