What's a thesis and how do I write one?

Tags Thesis wtc
  • A thesis statement declares the main point or controlling idea of your entire paper.  
  • The thesis briefly answers the questions, “What am I going to argue/illustrate in this paper?” as well as “How am I going to argue/illustrate this point?”  
  • In other words, a thesis statement tells not only where the composition is going, but how it is going to get there.  
  • A thesis statement may be one sentence or many sentences, and it may be the first sentence of your essay, the last sentence of your introduction, or come at the very end of your essay (if you choose to pose a question at first).  
  • A thesis makes a promise to your reader, a promise that you will defend and support everything it says, but not include information that reaches outside of its scope.
  • In other words, nothing in your thesis should be left out of your paper, and nothing in your paper should be left out of your thesis.
  • You will need to know quite a bit about your topic before you can write a thesis statement.
  •  In fact many writers don't "perfect" their thesis statements until the end of the writing process.
  •  As you research and learn about your topic, you will probably have questions.  
  • Often one of those questions can end up becoming a thesis statement.
  • For example if you were researching energy policy in the United States, you might come across writing that would make you have questions such as these: "Should the U.S. use more clean energy sources?", "Is a shift away from fossil fuels necessary?", "Is solar energy really clean or are there hidden environmental problems?".
  • At some point, one of these questions could evolve into a thesis statement such as:  "In order to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil and slow environmental degradation the government should subsidize research and development of solar energy".
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