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How To Write A Thesis Statement – Examples & Definition

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Definition Thesis Statement
3 Step-by-Step
5 Placement of the Thesis Statement
6 In Summary

Definition Thesis Statement

A thesis statement captures the main idea of a paper in one or two sentences . Your thesis statement points the reader to your interpretation of the subject under discussion and is important to the research question .

For example, if the topic is Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn , the thesis statement offers a way to understand and interpret this novel by focusing on specific aspects. Moreover, a thesis statement tells the reader what your paper is about and how you will build up your argument.

What is a thesis statement and why is it important?

The thesis statement outlines the thesis topic in 1-2 sentences. The reader should know immediately after reading the thesis statement what the paper is about and the stance that the author holds regarding this topic. The thesis statement leads to the body paragraphs and it sets up the reader for the rest of the paper.

Are there thesis statement examples?

Yes! You can find many thesis statement examples online. These examples will show you how a thesis statement is typically structured and the link that it holds with the thesis topic and research question. Thesis statement examples should inspire you only- it’s important to come up with your own thesis topic and thesis statement.

Where does the thesis statement go in a paper?

The thesis statement should be placed towards the end of the introduction for optimal thesis formatting . The beginning of the introduction supplies the reader with the background information they’ll need to understand your thesis statement. Whereas the sentences following the thesis statement lead into the body of your paper.

How do you write a strong thesis statement?

A strong thesis statement should be clear, consise and very specific. It will set the tone for the paper and your position regarding the topic needs to be clear to the reader. Always start with a research question before turning it into a declaration that is supported by evidence that you found during the research phase. Having some trouble with the wording of your thesis? Check out some useful transition words to get the inspiration flowing.

What are the steps in writing a thesis statement?

First, you need to have decided on your thesis topic. Then, you need to create a research question. The research question will be the basis of your thesis statement. To transform your research question into a thesis statement, you first turn the research question into a declaration that is supported by evidence you found whilst researching. Once you’ve done this, you have your working thesis statement!

Step-by-Step

Brainstorming and collecting information online or in scientific literature can serve as a good first step to writing a thesis statement. This will help you come up with a working thesis and ideas on how to structure a good argument. You cannot jump to formulating the thesis statement right after reading the essay assignment.

Thinking about specific aspects of the topic that you can use to build up your argument might take a while, but it is worth spending some time to come up with a well-written thesis statement.

How to write a thesis statement step by step:

Here are some examples of thesis statements (cf. JBirdwellBranson, https://www.servicescape.com/blog/25-thesis-statement-examples-that-will-make-writing-a-breeze, Last accessed 28 th Mar 2019) to give you a better idea of how to formulate your own thesis statement.

Please note that the following sample thesis statements are intended as examples only, as they have not been fully researched. It is important that you come up with your own thesis statement based on your own research question. Only by giving your own thesis statement enough thought will you be able to argue convincingly.

Examples of good and bad thesis statements

A good thesis statement is specific , clear , original , and includes a comment on how you are positioning yourself with respect to the issue at hand. You must consistently avoid vague wording. Moreover, you should avoid stating the obvious, like “The point I want to make in my paper…”.

The following checklist will help you meet the afore-mentioned requirements for writing a good thesis statement.

Placement of the Thesis Statement

The thesis statement is an integral part of the first paragraph/the introduction of your essay, as it sets the scene of what is to come. After a brief introduction, the thesis statement reflects your point of view and summarizes the argument. Formulating the statement clearly and putting some thought into it ensures that your essay has a clear structure and focus – a common thread.

In course assignments, you are asked to convince the reader with your argument. This is just another form of persuasion (just as you might have to persuade your parents to let you use their car, or ask a friend to lend you money). Consequently, your thesis statement should give good reasons for readers to approve your line of argument.

Recommended: Harvard Referencing

A thesis statement summarizes the main argument of an essay in one or two sentences.
A thesis statement is part of the introductio n/the first paragraph of an essay.
In order to come up with a thesis statement, you have to brainstorm and research your topic first to find valid arguments to support the claim you want to make in your essay. The thesis statement can be revised during the writing process.
A thesis statement must be clear, specific, original, and should reflect your stance about the topic at hand. Generic words or formulas must be avoided.

Ashford University: “Thesis Generator”, in: Ashford University, https://awc.ashford.edu/writing-tools-thesis-generator.html , Last accessed 27th Mar 2019.

Center for Writing Studies: “Writing Tips: Thesis Statements”, in: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/tips/thesis/ , Last accessed 27th Mar 2019.

JBirdwellBranson: “25 Thesis Statement Examples That Will Make Writing a Breeze”, in: ServiceScape, https://www.servicescape.com/blog/25-thesis-statement-examples-that-will-make-writing-a-breeze , Last accessed 28th Mar 2019.

Purdue Online Writing Lab: “Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements”, in: Purdue University, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/thesis_statement_tips.html , Last accessed 27th Mar 2019.

The Writing Center: “Thesis Statement”, in: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/thesis-statements/ , Last accessed 27th Mar 2019.

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Module 7: Drafting a Research Paper

Developing your thesis statement, learning objectives.

Identify strategies for developing and revising a thesis statement

You should consider your thesis under construction throughout the writing process. Each time you return to it and revise it, it becomes more precise and decisive.

There’s no one way to write a good thesis statement, which can be a blessing and a curse. Many students look for a tried and true formula, but the truth is that there are just too many variables to consider. The real key to writing a strong thesis statement is understanding the core of your argument and how you want to engage your audience.

Throughout the writing process, you should return to your working thesis and see if it can be honed into a more precise and decisive thesis statement. This thesis statement, in turn, needs to be tweaked and revised until it becomes the best possible articulation of your paper’s claim.

The best way to revise your thesis statement is to ask questions about it and then examine the answers to those questions. By challenging your own ideas and forming definite reasons for those ideas, you can move toward a more precise point of view, which you can then incorporate into your thesis statement.

Ask yourself: who is the subject of my argument? For instance, if your argument is that bow hunting season should be longer, who would actually make that happen? So now the argument becomes “The Department of Fish and Wildlife should extend bow hunting season….”
Are we talking about the whole world? One country? One city?
Think about the timeline for your claim. If you’re suggesting a change, when should it happen? If you’re identifying a trend, how long has it been going on?
Look out for vague or broad terms, and replace them with more specific ones. Strong thesis statements need to be precise.
Asking “why” questions can help identify the stakes of your argument for your particular audience. Why should your reader care? Why is your solution important?

Revising a thesis

Revising a Thesis Statement. Authored by : Jennifer Lapum, Oona St-Amant, Michelle Hughes, Andy Tan, Arina Bogdan, Frances Dimaranan, Rachel Frantzke, and Nada Savicevic. Located at : https://pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca/scholarlywriting/chapter/revising-a-thesis-statement/ . Project : The Scholarship of Writing in Nursing Education: 1st Canadian Edition . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Under Construction. Authored by : DanTD. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lake_Minneola_Trail_Construction_sign.jpg . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Developing your Thesis Statement. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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6.12: Revising a Thesis Statement

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Your thesis statement will probably change as you write so that it reflects exactly what you discuss in your paper. Remember, you will begin with a working thesis statement, an indefinite statement that you make about your topic early in the writing process.

Working thesis statements will become stronger as you gather information and form new opinions and reasons for those opinions. Revisions will help you strengthen your thesis so that it matches what you have expressed in the body of your paper. See Table 6.4 for ways to remove irrelevant parts and revise your thesis.

Table 6.4: Revising a thesis

Student Tip

Ask Questions about Your Thesis Statement

Activity: Beware of the Pitfalls!

Some working thesis statements are provided below. Use the steps you have just learned to revise the working thesis to strengthen the statement.

Working Thesis: Today’s university students have too much stress in their life.
Working Thesis: Children are not exercising enough.

Attribution statement

Content from this page was remixed with our own original content and adapted, with editorial changes, from:

Writing for Success 1st Canadian Edition by Tara Horkoff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted. Download for free at: opentextbc.ca/writingforsuccess/

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Writing a Paper: Thesis Statements

Basics of thesis statements.

The thesis statement is the brief articulation of your paper's central argument and purpose. You might hear it referred to as simply a "thesis." Every scholarly paper should have a thesis statement, and strong thesis statements are concise, specific, and arguable. Concise means the thesis is short: perhaps one or two sentences for a shorter paper. Specific means the thesis deals with a narrow and focused topic, appropriate to the paper's length. Arguable means that a scholar in your field could disagree (or perhaps already has!).

Strong thesis statements address specific intellectual questions, have clear positions, and use a structure that reflects the overall structure of the paper. Read on to learn more about constructing a strong thesis statement.

Being Specific

This thesis statement has no specific argument:

Needs Improvement: In this essay, I will examine two scholarly articles to find similarities and differences.

This statement is concise, but it is neither specific nor arguable—a reader might wonder, "Which scholarly articles? What is the topic of this paper? What field is the author writing in?" Additionally, the purpose of the paper—to "examine…to find similarities and differences" is not of a scholarly level. Identifying similarities and differences is a good first step, but strong academic argument goes further, analyzing what those similarities and differences might mean or imply.

Better: In this essay, I will argue that Bowler's (2003) autocratic management style, when coupled with Smith's (2007) theory of social cognition, can reduce the expenses associated with employee turnover.

The new revision here is still concise, as well as specific and arguable. We can see that it is specific because the writer is mentioning (a) concrete ideas and (b) exact authors. We can also gather the field (business) and the topic (management and employee turnover). The statement is arguable because the student goes beyond merely comparing; he or she draws conclusions from that comparison ("can reduce the expenses associated with employee turnover").

Making a Unique Argument

This thesis draft repeats the language of the writing prompt without making a unique argument:

Needs Improvement: The purpose of this essay is to monitor, assess, and evaluate an educational program for its strengths and weaknesses. Then, I will provide suggestions for improvement.

You can see here that the student has simply stated the paper's assignment, without articulating specifically how he or she will address it. The student can correct this error simply by phrasing the thesis statement as a specific answer to the assignment prompt.

Better: Through a series of student interviews, I found that Kennedy High School's antibullying program was ineffective. In order to address issues of conflict between students, I argue that Kennedy High School should embrace policies outlined by the California Department of Education (2010).

Words like "ineffective" and "argue" show here that the student has clearly thought through the assignment and analyzed the material; he or she is putting forth a specific and debatable position. The concrete information ("student interviews," "antibullying") further prepares the reader for the body of the paper and demonstrates how the student has addressed the assignment prompt without just restating that language.

Creating a Debate

This thesis statement includes only obvious fact or plot summary instead of argument:

Needs Improvement: Leadership is an important quality in nurse educators.

A good strategy to determine if your thesis statement is too broad (and therefore, not arguable) is to ask yourself, "Would a scholar in my field disagree with this point?" Here, we can see easily that no scholar is likely to argue that leadership is an unimportant quality in nurse educators. The student needs to come up with a more arguable claim, and probably a narrower one; remember that a short paper needs a more focused topic than a dissertation.

Better: Roderick's (2009) theory of participatory leadership is particularly appropriate to nurse educators working within the emergency medicine field, where students benefit most from collegial and kinesthetic learning.

Here, the student has identified a particular type of leadership ("participatory leadership"), narrowing the topic, and has made an arguable claim (this type of leadership is "appropriate" to a specific type of nurse educator). Conceivably, a scholar in the nursing field might disagree with this approach. The student's paper can now proceed, providing specific pieces of evidence to support the arguable central claim.

Choosing the Right Words

This thesis statement uses large or scholarly-sounding words that have no real substance:

Needs Improvement: Scholars should work to seize metacognitive outcomes by harnessing discipline-based networks to empower collaborative infrastructures.

There are many words in this sentence that may be buzzwords in the student's field or key terms taken from other texts, but together they do not communicate a clear, specific meaning. Sometimes students think scholarly writing means constructing complex sentences using special language, but actually it's usually a stronger choice to write clear, simple sentences. When in doubt, remember that your ideas should be complex, not your sentence structure.

Better: Ecologists should work to educate the U.S. public on conservation methods by making use of local and national green organizations to create a widespread communication plan.

Notice in the revision that the field is now clear (ecology), and the language has been made much more field-specific ("conservation methods," "green organizations"), so the reader is able to see concretely the ideas the student is communicating.

Leaving Room for Discussion

This thesis statement is not capable of development or advancement in the paper:

Needs Improvement: There are always alternatives to illegal drug use.

This sample thesis statement makes a claim, but it is not a claim that will sustain extended discussion. This claim is the type of claim that might be appropriate for the conclusion of a paper, but in the beginning of the paper, the student is left with nowhere to go. What further points can be made? If there are "always alternatives" to the problem the student is identifying, then why bother developing a paper around that claim? Ideally, a thesis statement should be complex enough to explore over the length of the entire paper.

Better: The most effective treatment plan for methamphetamine addiction may be a combination of pharmacological and cognitive therapy, as argued by Baker (2008), Smith (2009), and Xavier (2011).

In the revised thesis, you can see the student make a specific, debatable claim that has the potential to generate several pages' worth of discussion. When drafting a thesis statement, think about the questions your thesis statement will generate: What follow-up inquiries might a reader have? In the first example, there are almost no additional questions implied, but the revised example allows for a good deal more exploration.

Thesis Mad Libs

If you are having trouble getting started, try using the models below to generate a rough model of a thesis statement! These models are intended for drafting purposes only and should not appear in your final work.

In this essay, I argue ____, using ______ to assert _____.
While scholars have often argued ______, I argue______, because_______.
Through an analysis of ______, I argue ______, which is important because_______.

Words to Avoid and to Embrace

When drafting your thesis statement, avoid words like explore, investigate, learn, compile, summarize , and explain to describe the main purpose of your paper. These words imply a paper that summarizes or "reports," rather than synthesizing and analyzing.

Instead of the terms above, try words like argue, critique, question , and interrogate . These more analytical words may help you begin strongly, by articulating a specific, critical, scholarly position.

Read Kayla's blog post for tips on taking a stand in a well-crafted thesis statement.

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Ways to Approach Revision

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

This vidcast talks about how writers might approach the revising process. Unlike editing, which tends to focus on final proofreading, revising often involves major changes to a document. Revising might be necessary at the document level, the chapter level, the paragraph level, or the sentence level. For each of these levels, revision can be thought of as a series of small, more specific tasks.

Note: Closed-captioning and a full transcript are available for this vidcast.

Quick Tips for Revising (PDF)

There are four major levels at which revision in writing occurs, each of which flows into another. The document and chapter levels form more broad, global levels of writing, whereas the paragraph and sentence levels form more narrow, local levels of writing. Through a series of guiding questions, this handout offers useful revising tips at each level of writing.

Chapter 6: The Writing Process and Pre-Writing

Revising a Thesis Statement

Table 6.4: Revising a thesis

Student Tip

Ask Questions about Your Thesis Statement

Activity: Beware of the Pitfalls!

Some working thesis statements are provided below. Use the steps you have just learned to revise the working thesis to strengthen the statement.

Working Thesis: Today’s university students have too much stress in their life.
Working Thesis: Children are not exercising enough.

Attribution statement

Content from this page was remixed with our own original content and adapted, with editorial changes, from:

The Scholarship of Writing in Nursing Education: 1st Canadian Edition Copyright © 2019 by Jennifer Lapum; Oona St-Amant; Michelle Hughes; Andy Tan; Arina Bogdan; Frances Dimaranan; Rachel Frantzke; and Nada Savicevic is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

II. Getting Started

2.5 Writing Thesis Statements

Kathryn Crowther; Lauren Curtright; Nancy Gilbert; Barbara Hall; Tracienne Ravita; and Kirk Swenson

To be effective, all support in an essay must work together to convey a central point; otherwise, an essay can fall into the trap of being out of order and confusing. Just as a topic sentence focuses and unifies a single paragraph, the thesis statement focuses and unifies an entire essay. This statement is like a signpost that signals the essay’s destination; it tells the reader the point you want to make in your essay, while the essay itself supports that point.

Because writing is not a linear process, you may find that the best thesis statement develops near the end of your first draft. However, creating a draft or working thesis early in the writing project helps give the drafting process clear direction. You should form your thesis before you begin to organize an essay, but you may find that it needs revision as the essay develops.

A thesis is not just a topic, but rather the writer’s comment or interpretation of the question or subject. For whatever topic you select (for example, school uniforms, social networking), you must ask yourself, “What do I want to say about it?” Asking and then answering this question is vital to forming a thesis that is precise, forceful, and confident.

In the majority of essays, a thesis is one sentence long and appears toward the end of the introductory paragraph. It is specific and focuses on one to three points of a single idea—points that are able to be demonstrated in the body paragraphs. It forecasts the content of the essay and suggests how you will organize your information. Remember that a thesis statement does not summarize an issue but rather dissects it.

Working Thesis Statements

A strong thesis statement must have the following qualities:

It must be arguable. A thesis statement must state a point of view or judgment about a topic. An established fact is not considered arguable.
It must be supportable. The thesis statement must contain a point of view that can be supported with evidence (reasons, facts, examples).
It must be specific. A thesis statement must be precise enough to allow for a coherent argument and remain focused on the topic.

Examples of Appropriate Thesis Statements

Closing all American borders for a period of five years is one solution that will tackle illegal immigration.
Compared to an absolute divorce, no-fault divorce is less expensive, promotes fairer settlements, and reflects a more realistic view of the causes for marital breakdown.
Exposing children from an early age to the dangers of drug abuse is a sure method of preventing future drug addicts.
In today’s crumbling job market, a high school diploma is not significant enough education to land a stable, lucrative job.
The societal and personal struggles of Troy Maxson in the play Fences symbolize the challenges of black males who lived through segregation and integration in the United States.

Pitfalls to Avoid

A thesis is weak when it is simply a declaration of your subject or a description of what you will discuss in your essay.

Weak Thesis Statement Example

My paper will explain why imagination is more important than knowledge.

A thesis is weak when it makes an unreasonable or outrageous claim or insults the opposing side.

Religious radicals across America are trying to legislate their Puritanical beliefs by banning required high school books.

A thesis is weak when it contains an obvious fact or something that no one can disagree with or provides a dead end.

Advertising companies use sex to sell their products.

A thesis is weak when the statement is too broad.

The life of Abraham Lincoln was long and challenging.

Ways to Revise Your Thesis

Your thesis statement begins as a working thesis statement, an indefinite statement that you make about your topic early in the writing process for the purpose of planning and guiding your writing. Working thesis statements often become stronger as you gather information and develop new ideas and reasons for those ideas. Revision helps you strengthen your thesis so that it matches what you have expressed in the body of the paper.

You can cut down on irrelevant aspects and revise your thesis by taking the following steps:

Pinpoint and replace all non specific words, such as people, everything, society, or life, with more precise words in order to reduce any vagueness.

Pinpoint and Replace Example

Working thesis: Young people have to work hard to succeed in life.

Revised thesis: Recent college graduates must have discipline and persistence in order to find and maintain a stable job in which they can use, and be appreciated for, their talents.

Explanation: The original includes too broad a range of people and does not define exactly what success entails. By replacing those general words like people and work hard , the writer can better focus their research and gain more direction in their writing. The revised thesis makes a more specific statement about success and what it means to work hard.

Clarify ideas that need explanation by asking yourself questions that narrow your thesis.

Clarify Example

Working thesis: The welfare system is a joke.

Revised thesis: The welfare system keeps a socioeconomic class from gaining employment by alluring members of that class with unearned income, instead of programs to improve their education and skill sets.

Explanation: A joke means many things to many people. Readers bring all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives to the reading process and would need clarification for a word so vague. This expression may also be too informal for the selected audience. By asking questions, the writer can devise a more precise and appropriate explanation for joke and more accurately defines their stance, which will better guide the writing of the essay.

Replace any linking verbs with action verbs. Linking verbs are forms of the verb to be , a verb that simply states that a situation exists.

Replace with Action Verbs Example

Working thesis: Kansas City school teachers are not paid enough.

Revised thesis: The Kansas City legislature cannot afford to pay its educators, resulting in job cuts and resignations in a district that sorely needs highly qualified and dedicated teachers.

Explanation: The linking verb in this working thesis statement is the word are . Linking verbs often make thesis statements weak because they do not express action. Rather, they connect words and phrases to the second half of the sentence. Readers might wonder, “Why are they not paid enough?” But this statement does not compel them to ask many more questions.

Who is not paying the teachers enough?
How much is considered “enough”?
What is the problem?
What are the results?
Omit any general claims that are hard to support.

Omit General Claims Example

Working thesis: Today’s teenage girls are too sexualized.

Revised thesis: Teenage girls who are captivated by the sexual images on the internet and social media are conditioned to believe that a woman’s worth depends on her sensuality, a feeling that harms their self-esteem and behavior.

Explanation: It is true that some young women in today’s society are more sexualized than in the past, but that is not true for all girls. Many girls have strict parents, dress appropriately, and do not engage in sexual activity while in middle school and high school. The writer of this thesis should ask the following questions:

Which teenage girls?
What constitutes “too” sexualized?
Why are they behaving that way?
Where does this behavior show up?
What are the repercussions?

This section contains material from:

Crowther, Kathryn, Lauren Curtright, Nancy Gilbert, Barbara Hall, Tracienne Ravita, and Kirk Swenson. Successful College Composition . 2nd ed. Book 8. Georgia: English Open Textbooks, 2016. http://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/8 . Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .

Relating to lines; a way of explaining information logically and/or sequentially; can refer to the chronological relaying of information.

A brief and concise statement or series of statements that outlines the main point(s) of a longer work. To summarize is to create a brief and concise statement or series of statements that outlines the main point(s) of a longer work.

To analyze closely or minutely; to scrutinize every aspect. Unlike the fields of biology, anatomy, or medicine, in rhetoric and writing, dissect does not refer to the cutting apart of a physical body but to the taking apart the body of an argument or idea piece by piece to understand it better.

A logical, rational, lucid, or understandable expression of an idea, concept, or notion; consistent and harmonious explanation.

Assertion or announcement of belief, understanding, or knowledge; a formal statement or proclamation.

Without a defined number or limit; unlimited, infinite, or undetermined.

An altered version of a written work. Revising means to rewrite in order to improve and make corrections. Unlike editing, which involves minor changes, revisions include major and noticeable changes to a written work.

Not relevant; unimportant; beside the point; not relating to the matter at hand.

Attractive, tempting, or seductive; to have an appealing and charismatic quality.

To influence or convince; to produce a certain or specific result through the use of force.

2.5 Writing Thesis Statements Copyright © 2022 by Kathryn Crowther; Lauren Curtright; Nancy Gilbert; Barbara Hall; Tracienne Ravita; and Kirk Swenson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Dissertation
What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples

What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples

Published on 15 September 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on 5 December 2023.

A thesis is a type of research paper based on your original research. It is usually submitted as the final step of a PhD program in the UK.

Writing a thesis can be a daunting experience. Indeed, alongside a dissertation , it is the longest piece of writing students typically complete. It relies on your ability to conduct research from start to finish: designing your research , collecting data , developing a robust analysis, drawing strong conclusions , and writing concisely .

Thesis template

You can also download our full thesis template in the format of your choice below. Our template includes a ready-made table of contents , as well as guidance for what each chapter should include. It’s easy to make it your own, and can help you get started.

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Thesis vs. thesis statement, how to structure a thesis, acknowledgements or preface, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review, methodology, reference list, proofreading and editing, defending your thesis, frequently asked questions about theses.

You may have heard the word thesis as a standalone term or as a component of academic writing called a thesis statement . Keep in mind that these are two very different things.

A thesis statement is a very common component of an essay, particularly in the humanities. It usually comprises 1 or 2 sentences in the introduction of your essay , and should clearly and concisely summarise the central points of your academic essay .
A thesis is a long-form piece of academic writing, often taking more than a full semester to complete. It is generally a degree requirement to complete a PhD program.
In many countries, particularly the UK, a dissertation is generally written at the bachelor’s or master’s level.
In the US, a dissertation is generally written as a final step toward obtaining a PhD.

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The final structure of your thesis depends on a variety of components, such as:

Your discipline
Your theoretical approach

Humanities theses are often structured more like a longer-form essay . Just like in an essay, you build an argument to support a central thesis.

In both hard and social sciences, theses typically include an introduction , literature review , methodology section , results section , discussion section , and conclusion section . These are each presented in their own dedicated section or chapter. In some cases, you might want to add an appendix .

Thesis examples

We’ve compiled a short list of thesis examples to help you get started.

Example thesis #1: ‘Abolition, Africans, and Abstraction: the Influence of the “Noble Savage” on British and French Antislavery Thought, 1787-1807’ by Suchait Kahlon.
Example thesis #2: ‘”A Starving Man Helping Another Starving Man”: UNRRA, India, and the Genesis of Global Relief, 1943-1947’ by Julian Saint Reiman.

The very first page of your thesis contains all necessary identifying information, including:

Your full title
Your full name
Your department
Your institution and degree program
Your submission date.

Sometimes the title page also includes your student ID, the name of your supervisor, or the university’s logo. Check out your university’s guidelines if you’re not sure.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

An abstract is a short summary of your thesis. Usually a maximum of 300 words long, it’s should include brief descriptions of your research objectives , methods, results, and conclusions. Though it may seem short, it introduces your work to your audience, serving as a first impression of your thesis.

Theoretical framework

Your literature review can often form the basis for your theoretical framework, but these are not the same thing. A theoretical framework defines and analyses the concepts and theories that your research hinges on.

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Harvard Guide to Using Sources

The Honor Code

Writing "Original" Papers

Some of your writing assignments at Harvard will explicitly ask you to present an "original" thesis, claim, or idea. But even when the word "original" isn't mentioned, you should assume that your professor expects you to develop a thesis that is the product of your own thinking and not something drawn directly from a source. Occasionally an assignment will require only a summary of your reading, particularly if the instructor wants to make sure you have understood a particularly complex concept; however, some assignments may be worded in a way that leaves expectations ambiguous (you may be asked, for example, to "discuss" or "consider" a source), and you may think you are only expected to summarize when, in fact, you are expected to make an argument. When in doubt about whether you are supposed to make an argument in your paper, always check with your instructor to make sure you understand what you're expected to do.

The expectation that you will say something original in every college paper may seem daunting. After all, how can you, an undergraduate who has been studying a particular subject for as little as one semester, know enough to make an original contribution to a field that your professor may have spent a career studying? Indeed, it would be impossible for you to come up with an idea for every paper you write that no one has ever thought of before, and your instructors realize this. When they ask you to come up with an original idea, they may be signaling different expectations, depending on the context of the assignment. Below, you'll find a general framework for thinking about originality in different situations you will encounter in college.

Writing Situation #1: Short Non-Research Papers

In the context of certain assignments, it's enough to come up with a thesis that's original to you—a thesis that you arrived at after thinking about the material you read, rather than an idea you encountered in one of the assigned sources. This will be true for the papers you write in Expos, as well as for many of the short papers you write in your Gen Ed and concentration courses. For these papers, your instructor does not expect you to come up with an idea that no one else has ever written about. Instead, your instructor is most interested in your thought process, your analytical skills, and the way you explain why you think what you think. But why, you may be wondering, would anyone bother writing a paper that presents an idea that other scholars have written about already?

Here's the short answer to that question: There is real value in discovering an idea for yourself, selecting the best evidence to support it, and taking the necessary steps to argue for it. Taking these steps helps you learn both what you think about a topic or issue and how to think through a problem or set of problems. This kind of thinking is necessary preparation for the longer projects you'll do later in your college career when you will be expected to say something truly original. It's impossible to tackle those projects—from a senior thesis to original lab research—if you haven't had the experience of arriving at an idea, fleshing out an argument, and presenting it to an audience. This preparation will serve you well as your college coursework becomes more specialized, and it will also benefit you when you leave college. Whatever field you go into, you'll find yourself in situations where your analysis of a particular problem—and your use of sources to solve that problem—will be crucial to your success.

While the specifics of the assignments for short papers will vary, remember that whenever you're asked to make a claim, you're expected to do your own thinking. In other words, writing a paper about a claim that has been worked over in class, in section, or in your readings will not leave you room to do much thinking of your own. Nor will writing a paper about a claim that will strike your readers as obvious, simple, and unarguable. If you are interested in an idea that has come up in class, or one that seems obvious, you should work on extending or complicating this idea, or coming up with a counterargument that changes the way the idea should be considered. Also, keep in mind that when your instructors tell you not to consult outside sources, they are often doing so precisely to encourage your original thinking, and you should follow their instructions. When an assignment specifies that you avoid outside sources, you should generally take this to mean that you should not do any outside reading in preparation for the assignment.

Writing Situation #2: Short Research Papers and Term Papers

When you are assigned a research paper or term paper for a course, you will often be asked to write 10-20 pages in which you respond to sources you identify and locate yourself . As with the shorter papers you write for your courses, you will generally not be expected to come up with an idea that has never been considered before (although your instructors will certainly be pleased if you do). So how will you know if your idea is original enough?

The key to answering this question is to think carefully about the context of the course and to decide what's reasonable for you to do given the scope of the assignment. For example, if you've been asked to find five sources of your own, your paper will not be original enough if your argument simply echoes one of these sources, or if it echoes a source that was assigned in class. On the other hand, if you locate three sources, each of which offers different answers to the same question, your paper will be original if you can make your own argument for which answer makes the most sense and why.

Your argument will not, however, be original enough if you make the same argument as one of the sources without acknowledging why that source makes the strongest argument. For example, if you were writing about climate change and you were asked to read and consider an argument for investing in nuclear energy and an argument against investing in nuclear energy, you might agree with one of those arguments and present your argument for why it is the stronger idea. Or you might decide that both arguments fall short. You might decide that you support or oppose investing in nuclear energy for reasons other than those offered in the source’s argument. Or you might decide that the argument opposing nuclear energy misses a key factor. The result of doing your own thinking about the topic would be a paper that does not simply restate the position of one of your sources but, rather, uses those sources to inform your own thinking. And the process of writing that paper would have gotten you closer to figuring out what you think about the topic. When you are doing research, it's always a good idea to check in with your instructor to make sure that you are not overlooking important work in that field and that the sources you are choosing are significant and appropriate for your project.

Writing Situation #3: The Junior Tutorial and the Senior Thesis

When you write a substantial piece of work that takes a semester or more (like a junior tutorial paper or a senior thesis), the expectations for originality are different because of the length of the essay you'll write and because of your level of expertise in the field. As you gain experience in your concentration, your knowledge of the major ideas in your chosen field will expand, you will develop your ability to ask more rigorous questions in that field, and you will be able to answer those questions in ways that are original not just to you but to your readers. At this point in your college career, you'll have had the opportunity to learn who the major thinkers are in your field and how to identify the important literature on what research has taken place on your topic. You'll be able to find the most important current scholarship on a topic or the most recent findings related to your research question. Your expertise, along with the time you'll have to devote to the project, means that you will be well-equipped to say something original about your topic.

Even when you write these longer papers, it's still important to understand what it means to say something original. Academic work is very specialized, and scholars build theories and ideas based on the knowledge and ideas that they have studied. In practical terms, this means that ideas evolve slowly, and every original idea doesn't have to be E=mc2 or Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." While there's nothing wrong with hoping to discover a new element to add to the periodic table or trying to figure out the true identity of Shakespeare, it's more likely that your ideas will be original in any of the following ways.

You might discover, in your study of a particular topic, that no one has considered a question or problem that interests you. Or you might bring new information or a new perspective to a question that others have asked. For example, you might look at newly released government documents to consider a question about how the Reagan administration shaped economic policies. While the question may have been asked before, the newly available data will allow you to provide a fresh, original perspective. Similarly, while many people have written about Shakespeare’s plays, you might find that comparing a new production to a more traditional version would bring you a fresh perspective on the play.

Sometimes collecting and analyzing your own data will provide an original take on a topic. For example, if you were writing a senior thesis in a lab science or social science concentration, you might collect and analyze your own data in pursuit of an answer to a question that other scholars have attempted to answer before with different types of data. In psychology, for example, you might conduct an experiment under the supervision of a professor and then analyze your data. In a sociology or anthropology course, you might conduct a series of interviews and analyze them in order to answer a question in a new way.

As appealing as it might seem to discover an entirely new idea, it's just as valuable to add a new step or a new way of thinking to an idea that someone else has already presented. It's also valuable—and original—to consider ideas in relation to each other that have not been considered or connected to each other in this way before.

Whether you're working on a short assignment or a semester-long project, remember that even in the context of all the thinking that has come before yours, you are always capable of bringing your own unique point of view to a paper. In fact, you're doing your own thinking all the time, long before you start writing—in class discussion, in the dining hall, and in your instructor's office hours. When you bring sources into the equation, you're able to go beyond your gut reactions and feelings ("capitalism is good" or “capitalism is bad”) to develop more nuanced ideas ("capitalism does a better job of creating incentives for innovation than other systems" or "a capitalist society cannot protect the most vulnerable"). Sources also introduce you to competing arguments and interpretations and help to lay the groundwork for your own thinking. When you read what has already been written on a particular topic, or when you analyze data that has already been produced in addition to new data, you become more qualified to contribute to the conversation.

Many students tackling college-level writing for the first time find the expectations of college writing new and difficult. There are resources to help you as you embark on your writing assignments at Harvard, and you should feel free to make use of them. Writing Center tutors , Departmental Writing Fellows , and House tutors are all excellent resources. The Harvard Writing Project publishes a number of guides to writing in different fields, and the Writing Center offers general writing resources in addition to individual conferences.

Before you can use sources effectively, you need to know how to locate them, how to know if they are reliable, and how to distinguish clearly between the ideas in a source and your own ideas. The information on this site provides an introduction to the research process, including how and where to find sources , how to decide if a source is reliable and useful , how to use sources accurately and effectively in your papers both to strengthen your own thinking and writing and to avoid plagiarism, and finally, how to integrate source material into your writing and how to cite sources responsibly .

What Does It Mean to Be Controversial?

Most of your college writing assignments will instruct you to take a position or to make an argument. While it's important to learn how to weigh the evidence and draw conclusions that may be different from those of other scholars, it's also important to remember that in academic writing, the most controversial position isn't necessarily the strongest one to take. It might be tempting to manufacture a controversial argument by over-generalizing or caricaturing the ideas you oppose, but ultimately this kind of argument will be neither convincing nor interesting. Any argument you make should be the result of careful thought, and it should follow from a fair reading of the evidence available to you.

Consider, for example, an essay that Aishani Aatresh wrote for her ESPP class, Technology, Environment, and Society. In the paper, Aatresh tries to answer the question of why hydrogen-powered vehicles have not been as successful as electric vehicles in the United States. While it would have sounded most controversial to argue something like “hydrogen-powered vehicles will always be too dangerous because hydrogen is so flammable,” or “hydrogen-powered vehicles are inferior to electric vehicles in every way,” Aatresh’s research suggested that this type of statement would oversimplify a complex situation. She ended up with a thesis that is still controversial in the sense that readers may disagree with it, but one that does not depend on over-simplifying the issues at stake.

Here is the thesis statement she drafted:

Instead of being a contest of modes of sustainability or “superior” technology, FCEVs largely fit into familiar modes of movement while EVs represent elite, material, and innovative “progress” and thus are differentially situated in American society based on how these visions relate to the idea of independence.

With this thesis statement, Aatresh was able to use the evidence that she uncovered to take a position on a controversial topic (alternative fuels) that was both nuanced and arguable.

What Are You Supposed to Do with Sources?
Writing "Original" Papers
Using Sources Beyond Harvard

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8.4: Creating and Revising a Thesis Statement

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HOW CAN I CREATE A THESIS?

TOPIC + OPINION + SO WHAT? = THESIS

Step 1 : Brainstorm Topics

Here are some questions that could help you:

What in the text inspired, confused, angered, excited, annoyed, and/or surprised you?
What in the text was important for you to understand or you feel others should be aware of?
What does the prompt/assignment ask you to focus on and explore?

Brainstorm the issues, ideas, and themes raised in the reading (create at least 15 for a range of options):

Step 2 : Select a topic

Choose one of the topics that most interest you and you want to explore further:

Step 3 : Create complex questions about your topic

Create complex questions to be answered with opinion, not facts or yes/no answers. Here are some question formats that could help you: How is (topic) connected to (outside issue)? How do the flaws in the author’s arguments on (topic) result in (outcome)? What angles on (topic) have been overlooked? How can we apply the information about (topic)? How did/will (effect) occur because/if (cause) happened or will happen? How can (problem) be addressed or changed for (topic)?

Step 4 : Answer your best question with your opinion.

This creates a rough thesis statement.

Step 5 : Ask yourself “so what?” So what is the impact, importance, outcomes, or larger implications?

This strengthens and deepens your thesis statement.

Step 6 : Using your answer with its significance, write a 1-2 sentence thesis statement.

This refines and focuses your thesis statement.

Step 7 : Test the thesis by seeing if you can gather good evidence to support it.

Go through the main text(s) you are writing on and list all the passages (using page numbers) that directly prove and/or illustrate your argument: List potential outside evidence, such as research, outside sources, real-life examples, personal knowledge, personal examples that could possibly further prove and/or illustrate your argument: If you cannot find strong or sufficient evidence, then rethink your thesis statement.

Step 1 : Brainstorm Topics Here are some questions that could help you:

Reading and writing as dangerous

How is control of human beings connected to writing and reading?

Why were the slaveholders so fearful of slaves learning to read and write?

When has reading lead to violence and uprising?

What about becoming educated leads to Douglass’s despair?

Slaves were controlled by not being able to read and write because they could not learn by reading the arguments and experiences of others and from history what is fair, just and reasonable and what is not.

So what? We should be concerned because in certain parts of the world today, what the public can read and write is controlled and as a result the rights of the people are violated and they are powerless or ignorant of this.

The control and limitations over reading and writing during slavery sought to make slaves like Douglass ignorant, powerless, and more easily controlled, and this control over literacy and education is still happening in the world today.

Go through the main text(s) you are writing on and list all the passages (using page numbers) that directly prove and/or illustrate your argument:

Douglass discovers that “… education and slavery were incompatible with each other.” (1)
On page 2 it describes how Douglass read in “The Columbian Orator” how a slave used logic and persuasive argument so well that his master freed him (shows education can lead to change).
Reading and education makes one intolerant of injustice: “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers” (2).
Douglass says: “…that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity” (2) (But Douglass did not give up and later was instrumental in abolishing slavery)

List potential outside evidence, such as research, outside sources, real-life examples, personal knowledge, personal examples that could possibly further prove and/or illustrate your argument:

Mukhtar Mai in her memoir In the Name of Honor , tells how as a woman in Pakistan, she was not allowed to learn to read and write. As a result, when she was publically gang raped in 2002 by members of a more powerful clan, she went to the police and they wrote down an incorrect statement of the account so after years of going through the court system, the men were acquitted. Since then she has learned to read and write, she has started schools to educate girls, and remains today an outspoken advocate for women’s rights.
In Alex S. Jones’s Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy he argues that in the United States we are losing funding and support for investigative journalism so Americans are getting sound bites of news and no real understanding of what is going on politically or financially so we don’t protest and don’t understand the sources for the larger societal problems like the recent financial collapse.
Jonathan Kozol in Savage Inequalities , looks at different cities and sees how many of the urban poor, most of whom are black and Latino, are not given an equal education because school funding is based on income and property tax. As a result, there is an enormous dropout rate and many of these kids can barely read and write.

HOW CAN I REVISE AND STRENGTHEN A THESIS?

Changing ineffective thesis statements to effective ones:.

1. A strong thesis statement takes a stand: your thesis needs to show your conclusions about a subject.

WEAK THESIS: Douglass makes the interesting point that there are some negative and positive aspects to reading.

This is a weak thesis statement. It fails to take a stand and the words interesting and negative and positive aspects are vague.

STRONGER THESIS:

2. A strong thesis statement justifies discussion: your thesis should indicate the point of the discussion.

WEAK THESIS: Christians practiced slavery in the United States.

This is a weak thesis statement because it merely states a fact, so your reader won’t be able to tell the point of the statement.

3. A strong thesis statement expresses one main idea: Readers need to be able to see that your paper has one main point. If your thesis statement expresses more than one idea, then you might confuse your readers about the subject of your paper.

WEAK THESIS: People should not follow unjust laws and showing strong determination is what helped Douglass to be successful.

This is a weak thesis statement because the reader can’t decide whether the paper is about unjust laws or strong determination. To revise the thesis, the relationship between the two ideas needs to become clearer. STRONGER THESIS:

4. A strong thesis statement is specific: A thesis statement should show exactly what your paper will be about and the argument should be narrow enough to be concretely proven.

WEAK THESIS: Slavery in the United States damaged many lives.

This is a weak thesis statement for two reasons. First, slavery can’t be discussed thoroughly in a short essay. Second, damaged is vague and many lives is very general. You should be able to identify specific causes and effects. STRONGER THESIS:

Revision Strategies

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Ideas take precedence over style . The first step is to check that the content of the paper is logically sequenced . The paper should walk the reader step by step through your reasoning. Before you worry about making something “sound better,” first make sure that you have presented the best progression of ideas. During the pre-writing phase, it is often helpful to play with the order of your ideas and see what sequence makes the most sense. During revision, revisit your earlier thinking about the order of ideas.
Changing one idea can affect many ideas. Altering one link in the chain of thought can cause a larger chain reaction than we might expect. It is always important to follow ideas to their logical end – and this is why writers sometimes hate revising. If one thing can change, everything might change. Your final product may bear little resemblance to your first draft. Try to embrace the possibility of restructuring and refinement rather than fear changes. You’ll end up with a stronger paper.
There is no one, right procedure. Each paper is its own self-contained engine, designed to respond to a specific prompt. Different parts of different papers will malfunction, requiring different attention and different tools. However, making sure you have a logical chain of ideas is the best place to start. And remember that revision takes time, so leave enough time for rethinking and rewriting.

Despite the case-by-case nature of the process, there are a few general guidelines you can follow to quickly identify and solve some of the most common problems needing revision.

Revising the Introduction

A lot of us get into the habit of “tacking on” our introduction and conclusion after writing the body of the paper. After all, the most important part of the introduction is the thesis, and so long as that is clearly articulated, we can worry about the rest of the introduction later. While the thesis is undeniably a key element, that does not mean that the rest of the first paragraph is just a container for the thesis. The rest of the introduction must point toward the thesis, either by introducing relevant information the reader needs to know up front and/or by qualifying the thesis's degree of specificity . The introduction is a sort of zoom lens that tells the reader where the chain of logic in the body will start.

Consider the following introductory paragraph:

In The Rhetoric of Fiction , literary theorist Wayne Booth tries to explain some frustrating dynamics that had gone unaccounted for in literary theory. Reacting to New Critical theory, Booth defends an analytical system that links the narrator’s method of delivery and the thematic content of the story. Chief among these concepts are the “implied author,” a guiding force the audience perceives to be directing the progress of the narrative, and a continuum of narratorial reliability based on the difference between the implied author and the views of the narrator. Some works of literature are almost impossible to judge without examining this relationship, as in Vladimir Nabokov’s The Vane Sisters, where we are presented with an ethically deficient character who seems unaware of his immorality. The relationship between the narrator’s behavior and the audience’s expectations of him in Nabokov’s The Vane Sisters reinforces Wayne Booth’s theory of the necessity of an implied author to direct the reader's judgment.

The first thing to observe here is the thesis. To paraphrase, the idea behind the paragraph is “This paper will restate and validate Wayne Booth’s theory, using Nabokov’s story as an example. Booth is right, and here’s why.” Wayne Booth, however, has already done this job, in a huge book, no less. So why repeat it as the subject of your own paper? After some reconsideration, the writer decides to develop and refine the thesis to examine a slightly different question.

Revised Thesis

The dissonance between the narrator’s apparent cruelty toward Cynthia Vane and the sympathy we develop toward her create an ambiguity in judging the narrator's ethics, one best worked out in light of Wayne Booth’s concepts of the implied author, a continuum of narratorial reliability, and ethical motive behind narrative distance.

The thesis now has a narrower focus, and not only is the idea now more original (This paper will explain a problematic aspect of the Nabokov story, using some of Booth's theoretical concepts), but the relationship between the two halves of the thesis has been reversed . The first thesis promised a proof of the existing theory through a close reading of the story; the second promises a close reading that results from engaging the theory.

But does the rest of the introduction that preceded the original thesis still work for this new one? We can find out by asking the following questions:

Look at the paragraph in terms of the logical progression of ideas. In the first version, the writer introduces the theory by providing a bit of history, then transitions mid-paragraph into a description of some of the concepts within it, before finally introducing the Nabokov story as the focus of the paper. This could work in introducing the new thesis, but…
Consider alternative progressions . Because the new thesis already contains a list of concepts more relevant to the conflict in the story, it may be better to use the introduction to give background about the story rather than the theory . The idea chain could begin with introducing Nabokov and giving a bit of context about the relationships in the story – a simple case of substitution. Whatever you decide to do…
Revisit after revising . Always go back and make sure that the changes you make hold up under logical scrutiny and reflect the goal of the paper once you've completed a revision.

A revised introduction might look like this:

Vladimir Nabokov’s short story, The Vane Sisters , ends with an unusual fictional situation: the narrator being at a loss for words. After several pages of following our protagonist through his unapologetically mean treatment of Cynthia Vane, his final sputtering seems both out-of-character for him and noncommittal for Nabokov. We are left unsure of fundamental facts that impede our understanding of the story – specifically, if this ethically deficient character fails to change by the end, what is the point? Nabokov has crafted an elegant but problematic story where we as readers have far more insight into the narrator's personality than he has himself, leaving it up to us to “finish” the story. The dissonance between the narrator’s apparent cruelty toward Cynthia Vane and the sympathy we develop toward her create an ambiguity in judging the narrator’s ethics, one perhaps best worked out in light of Wayne Booth’s concepts of the implied author, a continuum of narratorial reliability, and ethical motive behind narrative distance.

The writer’s shift from a focus on Booth to a focus on the text requires that the material introducing the thesis accords with the focus of the thesis itself, so that it both forecasts and reinforces the thesis.

Revising Body Paragraphs

Revising body paragraphs needs to take place on two levels . Each paragraph is made up of a series of small ideas that make up a mini-progression, but each paragraph is also part of the overall progression of the paper. When revising, remember that success on one level does not ensure success on the other .

Let's look at an example body paragraph to see how it can be revised:

The narrator of The Vane Sisters is engaging, if cruel. He has a sharp wit and is literarily aware, making his writing intelligent and maddeningly referential. However, he weaponizes this wit against now-deceased Cynthia and suicidal Sybil, characters who ultimately deserve our sympathy. Consider his comic but critical rendering of Sybil's French exam booklet: “that limp notebook […] a kind of passport to a casual Elysium (where pencil points do not snap and a dreamy young beauty with an impeccable complexion winds a lock of her hair on a dreamy forefinger, as she meditates over some celestial test)” (618). He later also derides Cynthia, his professed friend, though not exactly beautiful: “The interval between her thick black eyebrows was always shiny, and shiny too were the fleshy volutes of her nostrils. The coarse texture of her epiderm looked almost masculine, and, in the stark lamplight of her studio, you could see the pores of her thirty-two-year-old face fairly gaping at you" (619). Because Cynthia is ultimately deserving of our sympathy, it is clear that Nabokov wants us to judge his narrator as ethically deficient.

The paragraph seems coherent enough, and the writer has wisely started the paragraph by clarifying a discrepancy in the thesis: what is the nature of the “dissonance” between these two characters? The writer then builds on three links to the initial claim: 1) a claim that the reader should sympathize with the Vane Sisters, 2) examples from the text of the narrator’s poor treatment of them, and 3) a claim about how Nabokov wants us to think of his narrator. The logical chain, however, seems a bit messy.

First, and most obviously, the narrator has not yet mentioned Wayne Booth, though given the function of the paragraph, he may not be necessary. However, we still want promise as readers that he will be relevant somewhat soon. Second, both quotations are somewhat long, and neither is really explained or put to any use to merit the length. Third, the sisters’ deaths, new information, go unqualified while the narrator’s style does. And fourth, we still don’t know why the sisters deserve our sympathy.

Each of these points corresponds to a question you might ask yourself to evaluate body paragraphs:

Are there any holes or irrelevances in the chain? By breaking your paragraphs down into ideas, you can see if there are holes in the logical chain that force the reader to leap to a conclusion you think you've proven. For example, what are the circumstances of the sisters’ deaths? Will they impact our level of sympathy? Also, Booth’s theories may not be important now, but the writer might want to guarantee that they soon will be. Paragraphs may also contain irrelevant details that take up space that could be used to fill in significant holes. One might, for example, point out the paragraph’s second sentence, and ask, is the commentary about the narrator’s intellectual style integral to the argument of this paragraph?
Does your chain hold up to counterexamples? By playing devil’s advocate with yourself, you can determine if your ideas hold up or not. Coming up with counterarguments also provides an opportunity to deepen your consideration of a given section of your proof, and may help you develop your argument and increase your paper’s effectiveness. A counterargument for this paragraph is “Maybe Cynthia doesn't deserve our sympathy. How are we to be sure?”
Do your sources actively support your thinking or just fill space? If you’re going to quote directly from the text, it means that the author has said something so well that paraphrasing it will devalue it, or that there’s a passage you would like to unpack for the reader. Quotations should be a part of your chain of reasoning, like everything else. If they feel separated or detached, you may want to reconsider what you are using them for. In this paragraph: Is anything gained by including the whole quotation instead of just select phrases? In fact, no – the writer merely wants to provide an example of style, but the quotations wind up bringing up more questions than they answer.
Does the conclusion of the paragraph allow for a natural transition and invoke the thesis? The last couple of sentences in a paragraph should accomplish three different things: conclude the chain of reasoning in the paragraph, refer back to the thesis, and prepare the next step in the larger argument. In this paragraph, the writer concludes effectively. However, there is no mention of Wayne Booth, meaning only a part of the thesis has been invoked, and there is no evident “next step.”

In light of these concerns, how might the paragraph be refocused or revised? First, the writer must decide if it is more important in the first paragraph to establish why we ought to feel sympathy for the Vane sisters rather than comment on the narrator’s style. The writer can spend less time quoting and more time analyzing the relationship of the characters. Narrowing the focus based on the proposed counterargument also allows the writer to conclude with a promise of bringing Booth’s theory into the paper in the next paragraph, after having proven where our sympathy ought to be. This last move ensures not only that the paragraph has a strong internal argument but also that it is positioned in a larger context.

The Conclusion and “Finishing”

When drafting conclusions, the general tendency is to restate the thesis and to try to extend the significance of the argument in some way. After having revised the paper, though, you may find you have a deeper or more interesting understanding of the topic based on a more nuanced thesis. You want your last words to reflect the work you have done in reexamining the rest of the paper, so draw on your new understanding when revising your conclusion. Take the time to reflect on a meaningful moment in your revision. Does something seem newly important? Does the thesis imply something controversial? Are there lingering questions to address? How have my revisions made the topic seem fresh?

Experimenting with these questions, however, may lead you to further redefine the parameters of your paper, thus sending you back into the revision cycle yet again. No draft is ever perfect . Pace yourself by doing some lighter editing in between spurts of revision thinking, and be open to declaring when the work is done. Consider showing your draft to a friend, a classmate, a professor, or a writing tutor for feedback from an objective reader. Remember that you might not have a solution to every problem, so be sure to keep track of frustrating points as you revise to run by another reader.

You alone will be able to gauge when you have finished revising, but in general, you should be able to point to a nuanced and specific thesis , a rigidly structured and well-supported body in the form of a cohesive, logical chain , and a conclusion that highlights an interesting facet of the topic .

by Michael Harwick

Works referenced.

Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Nabokov, Vladimir. “The Vane Sisters.” The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Ed. Dmitri Nabokov. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

For more information about composing the components of a persuasive essay, you may wish to consult other Writing Center materials, including Introductions and Thesis Statements, Developing Your Thesis , and Conclusions .

The author acknowledges the help of Sharon Williams, Caitlin Fitzsimons ’11, Andrew Peart ’10, and Amy Tannenbaum ’10 for feedback on this document.

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An Original Thesis: Does That Even Exist?

February 1, 2018

By Soondos Mulla-Ossman

You've just gotten back your first paper of the semester. Your professor is making a face. "I liked your paper, but..." You know what's coming. "I was hoping for a little more...originality."

Coming up with an original idea can be hard for any writer, especially if you've endured the tumultuous process of brainstorming, writing an outline, a first draft, a second draft, etc. And yet, in spite of it all, it's not enough. After all, how can you be truly "original" when at least one of the 7.6 billion other people in the world probably already took your idea? You're bound to accidentally talk about a concept that's already been explored, even if you don't realize it until the professor hands you back your graded essay.

The truth is, it's hard to know which ideas are common and which aren't in an area you've just been introduced to. For example, say you've read The Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the first time. Your class has little discussions about it as you work through chapter by chapter. Some students bring up observations you were already thinking about. Some mention things you hadn't considered prior. Either way, when it's time to write, you know other conversations about the book exist, but you're just not familiar with them all. It could take weeks, even months of poring through secondary texts to get even a faint grasp of what you could talk about.

The very core of a writer's topic is communicated through the thesis, so let's start from there. Going off of the example of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , say you want to talk about Dr. Jekyll's upbringing and how that influenced his actions in the book. That's a broad, common idea, but you can set it apart from this overdone concept by applying a second layer to it. This typically consists of a specific perspective or lens which professors may introduce, such as Marxist, feminist, queer, historical, and psychological perspectives. These lenses serve to frame your scope-or in other words, focus the way you relay your argument. So, if I want to talk about the elements that factored into how Dr. Jekyll was raised, I may want to focus on the historical context behind it-hence applying a historical lens.

That's not always enough, though. Say that with the aid of a historical lens, you decide that you want to write your paper about how London society at the time was responsible for shaping Dr. Jekyll into the kind of person that he was at the start of the novel. Unfortunately, a lot of people may have talked about that. So now what? Here's where the third layer comes into play. For this, zero in on something very specific within the text-and it doesn't have to be explicitly related to the topic of the second layer. A lot of people talk about the historical context of the story. But do people talk about how the police system worked at that time? Or how criminal detective work in general functioned? What about the culture of social structures? Housing? These elements compound in the eventual pursuit of Mr. Hyde, but some may dismiss them as minor themes in the broader story. Here's where you can be different. Grab those seemingly "little" ideas and expand upon them. Take those things that people don't ordinarily care about and make people care about it.

All of a sudden, your thesis statement has gone from "I wanna write about Dr. Jekyll's upbringing" to "Dr. Jekyll grew up a victim of the police force's historical tendencies towards truancy." Bam. Of course, a more unique topic does come with some drawbacks. One of the first things that may be immediately apparent is that finding sources may have just gotten a whole lot harder. After all, if not a lot of people are talking about it already, then how are you going to get quotes? This can be remedied with unyielding searching and reaching out to professors and library staff for help. Searching the history of London's police force, for example, provides helpful documentation that can be bent into your own interpretations.

Secondly, you'll have an easier time finding arguments against your own. Having a strong voice of disagreement may actually be a blessing in disguise, because professors may also expect you to address an opposing argument in your paper. If it's easy to pick out the counterarguments for your claim, then you can just as easily prepare a refutation.

That's about it. Crafting an original idea can be as simple as grabbing multiple seemingly random concepts and bringing them together. Originality is not coming up with something from nothing, but considering and responding to what many different people have said in the past and molding them all together into something you can truly call yours. I have always considered originality to be one of the most important things to consider when planning any paper, and I definitely hope this at least provides some guidance in your own process.

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DISCOVERY OF NOVEL DISEASE BIOMARKERS AND THERAPEUTICS USING MACHINE LEARNING MODELS

In the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics, the identification of novel disease biomarkers and therapeutic strategies, especially for cancer diseases, remains a crucial challenge. The advancement in computer science, particularly machine learning techniques, has greatly empowered the study of computational biology and bioinformatics for their unprecedented prediction power. This thesis explores how to utilize classic and advanced machine learning models to predict prognostic pathways, biomarkers, and therapeutics associated with cancers.

Firstly, this thesis presents a comprehensive overview of computational biology and bioinformatics, covering past milestones to current groundbreaking advancements, providing context for the research. A centerpiece of this thesis is the introduction of the Pathway Ensemble Tool and Benchmark, an original methodology designated for the unbiased discovery of cancer-related pathways and biomarkers. This toolset not only enhances the identification of crucial prognostic components distinguishing clinical outcomes in cancer patients but also guides the development of targeted drug treatments based on these signatures. Inspired by Benchmark, we extended the methodology to single-cell technologies and proposed scBenchmark and PathPCA, which provides insights into the potential and limitations of how novel techniques can benefit biomarker and therapeutic discovery. Next, the research progresses to the development of DREx, a deep learning model trained on large-scale transcriptome data, for predicting gene expression responses to drug treatments across multiple cell lines. DREx highlights the potential of advanced machine learning models in drug repurposing using a genomics-centric approach, which could significantly enhance the efficiency of initial drug selection.

The thesis concludes by summarizing these findings and highlighting their importance in advancing cancer-related biomarkers and drug discovery. Various computational predictions in this work have already been experimentally validated, showcasing the real-life impact of these methodologies. By integrating machine learning models with computational biology and bioinformatics, this research pioneers new standards for novel biomarker and therapeutics discovery.

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Doctor of Philosophy
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West Lafayette

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Additional committee member 2, additional committee member 3, additional committee member 4, usage metrics.

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PDF Thesis Statements: An Overview
Steps to writing a thesis statement: 1.Start with a big topic and identify the subject of your paper. 2.Determine the topic you want to focus on within that subject. 3.Ask yourself a question about that topic. 4.Answer the question you posed within one sentence. 5.Use a tool like a thesis generator to help.
What Is a Thesis?
Revised on April 16, 2024. A thesis is a type of research paper based on your original research. It is usually submitted as the final step of a master's program or a capstone to a bachelor's degree. Writing a thesis can be a daunting experience. Other than a dissertation, it is one of the longest pieces of writing students typically complete.
PDF Marymount University
Original thesis: We must save the whales. Revised thesis: Because our planet's health may depend upon biological diversity, we should save the whales. When you make a (subjective) judgment call, specify and justify your reasoning. "Just because" is not a good reason for an argument. Original thesis: Socialism is the best form of government for ...
How To Write A Thesis Statement
Original thesis statement example (reasoning not justified): Socialism is the best form of government for Kenya. Revised thesis statement: If the government takes over industry in Kenya, then industry will become more efficient. Original thesis statement example (merely reports a fact): Hoover's administration was rocked by scandal.
2.6 Writing Thesis Statements
Explanation: The original includes too broad a range of people and does not define exactly what success entails. By replacing those general words like people and work hard, the writer can better focus their research and gain more direction in their writing. The revised thesis makes a more specific statement about success and what it means to ...
Developing your Thesis Statement
This thesis statement, in turn, needs to be tweaked and revised until it becomes the best possible articulation of your paper's claim. The best way to revise your thesis statement is to ask questions about it and then examine the answers to those questions. By challenging your own ideas and forming definite reasons for those ideas, you can ...
How to Write a Thesis Statement
Placement of the thesis statement. Step 1: Start with a question. Step 2: Write your initial answer. Step 3: Develop your answer. Step 4: Refine your thesis statement. Types of thesis statements. Other interesting articles. Frequently asked questions about thesis statements.
PDF Thesis
Thesis Your thesis is the central claim in your essay—your main insight or idea about your source or topic. Your thesis should appear early in an academic essay, followed by a logically constructed argument that supports this central claim. A strong thesis is arguable, which means a thoughtful reader could disagree with it and therefore needs
6.12: Revising a Thesis Statement
Revised thesis: Nursing students must have discipline and persistence to manage their course workload and be successful in their course evaluations. The revised thesis makes a more specific statement about success and what it means to work hard. The original includes too broad a range of people and does not define exactly what success entails.
1. Choose a Passage & Create a Thesis Statement
Original thesis: In this paper, I will discuss the relationship between fairy tales and early childhood. Revised thesis: Not just empty stories for kids, fairy tales shed light on the psychology of young children. Avoid making universal or pro/con judgments that oversimplify complex issues. Original thesis: We must save the whales.
Academic Guides: Writing a Paper: Thesis Statements
The thesis statement is the brief articulation of your paper's central argument and purpose. You might hear it referred to as simply a "thesis." Every scholarly paper should have a thesis statement, and strong thesis statements are concise, specific, and arguable. Concise means the thesis is short: perhaps one or two sentences for a shorter paper.
Ways to Approach Revision
This vidcast talks about how writers might approach the revising process. Unlike editing, which tends to focus on final proofreading, revising often involves major changes to a document. Revising might be necessary at the document level, the chapter level, the paragraph level, or the sentence level. For each of these levels, revision can be ...
Thesis Statement: How to Make it Stronger
Compare the original thesis (not specific and clear enough) with the revised version (much more specific and clear): ORIGINAL THESIS (WEAK): Although the timber wolf is a timid and gentle animal ...
Revising a Thesis Statement
Table 6.4: Revising a thesis. Identify and replace all nonspecific words, such as people, everything, society, or life, with more precise words to reduce any vagueness. Working thesis: University students have to work hard to succeed in school. Revised thesis: Nursing students must have discipline and persistence to manage their course workload ...
2.5 Writing Thesis Statements
Explanation: The original includes too broad a range of people and does not define exactly what success entails. By replacing those general words like people and work hard, the writer can better focus their research and gain more direction in their writing. The revised thesis makes a more specific statement about success and what it means to ...
PDF REVISING THESIS STATEMENTS
That original thesis statement has simply turned out to be a ''working thesis" that has helped you charge ahead and get a draft written. If by the end of the paper your working thesis doesn't turn out to be what you feel anymore, that's fine. For most writers, 73 .
What Is a Thesis?
A thesis is a type of research paper based on your original research. It is usually submitted as the final step of a PhD program in the UK. Writing a thesis can be a daunting experience. Indeed, alongside a dissertation, it is the longest piece of writing students typically complete. It relies on your ability to conduct research from start to ...
Writing "Original" Papers
Writing Situation #1: Short Non-Research Papers. In the context of certain assignments, it's enough to come up with a thesis that's original to you—a thesis that you arrived at after thinking about the material you read, rather than an idea you encountered in one of the assigned sources. This will be true for the papers you write in Expos, as ...
8.4: Creating and Revising a Thesis Statement
To revise the thesis, the relationship between the two ideas needs to become clearer. STRONGER THESIS: 4. A strong thesis statement is specific: A thesis statement should show exactly what your paper will be about and the argument should be narrow enough to be concretely proven. WEAK THESIS: Slavery in the United States damaged many lives.
Writing Resources
The thesis now has a narrower focus, and not only is the idea now more original (This paper will explain a problematic aspect of the Nabokov story, using some of Booth's theoretical concepts), but the relationship between the two halves of the thesis has been reversed. The first thesis promised a proof of the existing theory through a close ...
An Original Thesis: Does That Even Exist?
By Soondos Mulla-Ossman. You've just gotten back your first paper of the semester. Your professor is making a face. "I liked your paper, but..." You know what's coming. "I was hoping for a little more...originality." Coming up with an original idea can be hard for any writer, especially if you've endured the tumultuous process of brainstorming ...
PDF GUIDE FOR THE PREPARATION OF THESES AND DISSERTATIONS (Revised June
Thesis/Dissertation Q grades for the degree. Copies of the Thesis/Dissertation must be reviewed according to the regulations outlined by Graduate Studies and Research. The Thesis/Dissertation binding process is required and will be provided by ProQuest after the student has completed the following steps: 1.
Discovery of Novel Disease Biomarkers and Therapeutics Using Machine
A centerpiece of this thesis is the introduction of the Pathway Ensemble Tool and Benchmark, an original methodology designated for the unbiased discovery of cancer-related pathways and biomarkers. This toolset not only enhances the identification of crucial prognostic components distinguishing clinical outcomes in cancer patients but also ...
Phillips, John: Thesis: Symphony No. 9
Available to download below are John Phillips original thesis submitted in 2002 and his revised thoughts published in 2022. Download Phillips_John_Bruckner-9-Thesis.pdf. Download Phillips_John_B9-FinaleRev-ed.pdf.

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How To Write A Thesis Statement – Examples & Definition

Definition Thesis Statement

What is a thesis statement and why is it important?

Are there thesis statement examples?

Where does the thesis statement go in a paper?

How do you write a strong thesis statement?

What are the steps in writing a thesis statement?

Step-by-Step

Examples of good and bad thesis statements

Placement of the Thesis Statement

Module 7: Drafting a Research Paper

Revising a thesis

6.12: Revising a Thesis Statement

Activity: Beware of the Pitfalls!

Attribution statement

Writing a Paper: Thesis Statements

Being Specific

Making a Unique Argument

Creating a Debate

Choosing the Right Words

Leaving Room for Discussion

Thesis Mad Libs

Words to Avoid and to Embrace

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Ways to Approach Revision

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

Revising a Thesis Statement

Activity: Beware of the Pitfalls!

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2.5 Writing Thesis Statements

Working Thesis Statements

Pitfalls to Avoid

Ways to Revise Your Thesis

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Writing "Original" Papers

Writing Situation #1: Short Non-Research Papers

Writing Situation #2: Short Research Papers and Term Papers

Writing Situation #3: The Junior Tutorial and the Senior Thesis

What Does It Mean to Be Controversial?

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8.4: Creating and Revising a Thesis Statement

HOW CAN I CREATE A THESIS?

Step 1 : Brainstorm Topics

HOW CAN I REVISE AND STRENGTHEN A THESIS?

Revision Strategies

Revising the Introduction

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Revising Body Paragraphs

The Conclusion and “Finishing”

by Michael Harwick

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