BC MANUAL

Bridgewater College Online Writing Manual

The Thesis and Thesis Sentence

The thesis of your paper is its argument, overall: the position you've taken in your text. The thesis identifies both your topic and your attitude toward it.

The thesis statement is a statement of your entire paper's point "in a nutshell." If you reduced your whole argument to a single sentence, this would be your thesis statement.

Some teachers of writing distinguish between a thesis sentence and an announcement of topic, and generally, the announcement is discouraged. An announcement is a sentence that begins, "In this paper I will . . .," or, "This paper will demonstrate . . .," or "First I will . . .".

Although a writer's thesis may be implied in some published texts, most academic readers expect to find a clear, single statement of your thesis at some point in your paper. (A classic text whose thesis is implied is Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.) Many academic readers are most comfortable with a clear statement of your thesis in the first paragraph of an essay and a restatement of it in your concluding paragraph. In an inductive argument, however, or a paper following a problem-solution format, the thesis may appear only in the concluding paragraph.

For more information on the thesis, see: 

• "Thesis Writing" by Craig Waddell at Rensselaer Polytech's Writing Center;
• "Writing an Effective Thesis" at George Mason University Writing Center (with examples)

Updated by A. L. Trupe, Sept. 2006