this page is brought to you by the owl at purdue . This resource provides tips for creating a thesis statement and examples of different types of thesis statements. contributors: elyssa tardiff, allen brizee last edited: 2014 02 10 1:43 1. Determine what kind of paper you are writing: an analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience. An expository explanatory paper explains something to the audience.

An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause and effect statement, or an interpretation. The goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is true based on the evidence provided. A narrative , a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader. Your thesis statement should be specific mdash it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence.

The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper. Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper. Example of an analytical thesis statement: an analysis of the college admission process reveals one challenge facing counselors: accepting students with high test scores or students with strong extracurricular backgrounds.

The paper that follows should: this handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft. Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

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a thesis statement: tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion. Is a road map for the paper in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be world war ii or moby dick a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel. Is usually a single sentence somewhere in your first paragraph that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation. If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one.

When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts such as surprising contrasts or similarities , and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a working thesis, a basic or main idea, an argument that you think you can support with evidence but that may need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the writing center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following: do i answer the question? re reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. have i taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? if your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument. is my thesis statement specific enough? thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like good or successful, see if you could be more specific: why is something good what specifically makes something successful? does my thesis pass the so what? test? if a reader’s first response is, so what? then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.

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does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? if your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. does my thesis pass the how and why? test? if a reader’s first response is how? or why? your thesis may be too open ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning. Suppose you are taking a course on 19th century america, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: compare and contrast the reasons why the north and south fought the civil war. You turn on the computer and type out the following: the north and south fought the civil war for many reasons, some of which were the same and some different. this weak thesis restates the question without providing any additional information.

You will expand on this new information in the body of the essay, but it is important that the reader know where you are heading. A reader of this weak thesis might think, what reasons? how are they the same? how are they different? ask yourself these same questions and begin to compare northern and southern attitudes perhaps you first think, the south believed slavery was right, and the north thought slavery was wrong. Now, push your comparison toward an interpretation why did one side think slavery was right and the other side think it was wrong? you look again at the evidence, and you decide that you are going to argue that the north believed slavery was immoral while the south believed it upheld the southern way of life.

You write: while both sides fought the civil war over the issue of slavery, the north fought for moral reasons while the south fought to preserve its own institutions. now you have a working thesis! included in this working thesis is a reason for the war and some idea of how the two sides disagreed over this reason. As you write the essay, you will probably begin to characterize these differences more precisely, and your working thesis may start to seem too vague. Maybe you decide that both sides fought for moral reasons, and that they just focused on different moral issues. You end up revising the working thesis into a final thesis that really captures the argument in your paper: while both northerners and southerners believed they fought against tyranny and oppression, northerners focused on the oppression of slaves while southerners defended their own right to self government. compare this to the original weak thesis. This final thesis presents a way of interpreting evidence that illuminates the significance of the question. keep in mind that this is one of many possible interpretations of the civil war it is not the one and only right answer to the question.

There isn’t one right answer there are only strong and weak thesis statements and strong and weak uses of evidence. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the american novel: write an analysis of some aspect of mark twain’s novel huckleberry finn. I loved huckleberry finn ! you grab a pad of paper and write: mark twain’s huckleberry finn is a great american novel. why is this thesis weak? think about what the reader would expect from the essay that follows: you will most likely provide a general, appreciative summary of twain’s novel. Your professor is probably not interested in your opinion of the novel instead, she wants you to think about why it’s such a great novel what do huck’s adventures tell us about life, about america, about coming of age, about race relations, etc. First, the question asks you to pick an aspect of the novel that you think is important to its structure or meaning for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Mark twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore. here’s a working thesis with potential: you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation however, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal. Your reader is intrigued, but is still thinking, so what? what’s the point of this contrast? what does it signify? perhaps you are not sure yet, either.