How do you write and frame a thesis? Consider the following advice.

Compose a complete sentence Simple phrases might identify topic areas, even intriguing ones, but they don’t make specific claims that provoke thinking and then require support. Sentences do. (help with common errors) Neither of the following phrases comes close to providing direction for a paper.

Human trafficking in the United States

Reasons for global warming

Make a significant claim or assertion Significant here means that the statement stimulates discussion or inquiry. You want to give an audience a reason to spend time with your writing by making a point or raising an issue worth exploring.

Until communities recognize that human trafficking persists in parts of the United States, immigrant communities will be exploited by the practice.

Global warming won’t stop until industrial nations either lower their standards of living or admit the need for more nuclear power.

Write a declarative sentence, not a question Questions do focus attention, but they are often too broad to give direction to a paper. A humdrum question acting as a thesis can invite superficial or even sarcastic responses. So, while you might use a question to introduce a topic (or to launch your own research), don’t rely on it to carry a well-developed and complex claim in a paper. There are exceptions to this guideline: Provocative questions often give direction to personal and exploratory writing.

Expect your thesis to mature Your initial thesis will usually expand and grow more complicated as you learn more about a subject. That’s natural. But don’t believe the myth that a satisfactory thesis must be a statement that breaks a subject into three parts. Theses that follow this pattern often read like shopping lists, with only vague connections between the ideas presented.

ORIGINAL THESIS

Crime in the United States has declined because more people are in prison, the population is growing older, and DNA testing has made it harder to get away with murder.

When you slip into an easy pattern like this, look for connections between the points you have identified and then explore the truth. The result can sometimes be a far more compelling thesis.

REVISED THESIS

It is much more likely that crime in the United States has declined because more people are in prison than because the population is growing older or DNA testing has made it harder to get away with murder.

Introduce a thesis early in a project This sound guideline applies especially to academic projects and term papers. Instructors usually want to know up front what the point of a report or argument will be. Whether phrased as a single sentence or several, a thesis typically needs one or more paragraphs to provide background and contexts for its claim. Here’s the thesis (highlighted in yellow) of Andrew Kleinfeld and Judith Kleinfeld’s essay “Go Ahead, Call Us Cowboys,” following several sentences that offer the necessary lead-in.

Everywhere, Americans are called cowboys. On foreign tongues, the reference to America’s Western rural laborers is an insult. Cowboys, we are told, plundered the earth, arrogantly rode roughshod over neighbors, and were addicted to mindless violence. So some of us hang our heads in shame. We shouldn’t. The cowboy is in fact our Homeric hero, an archetypethat sticks because there’s truth in it.

Or state a thesis late in a project In high school, you may have heard that the thesis statement is always the last sentence in the first paragraph. That may be so in conventional five-paragraph essays, but you’ll rarely be asked to follow so predictable a pattern in college or elsewhere.

In fact, it is not unusual, especially in some arguments, for a paper to build toward a thesis — and that statement may not appear until the final paragraph or sentence. (understand argument) Such a strategy makes sense when a claim might not be convincing or rhetorically effective if stated baldly at the opening of the piece. Bret Stephens uses this strategy in an essay titled “Just Like Stalingrad” to debunk frequent comparisons between former President George W. Bush and either Hitler or Stalin. Stephens’s real concern turns out to be not these exaggerated comparisons themselves but rather what happens to language when it is abused by sloppy writers. The final two paragraphs of his essay summarize this case and, arguably, lead up to a thesis in the very last sentence of the piece — more rhetorically convincing there because it comes as something of a surprise.

Care for language is more than a concern for purity. When one describes President Bush as a fascist, what words remain for real fascists? When one describes Fallujah as Stalingrad-like, how can we express, in the words that remain to the language, what Stalingrad was like?

George Orwell wrote that the English language “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” In taking care with language, we take care of ourselves.

— Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2004

Write a thesis to fit your audience and purpose Almost everything you write will have a purpose and a point (see the following table), but not every piece will have a formal thesis. In professional and scientific writing, readers want to know your claim immediately. For persuasive and exploratory writing, you might prefer to keep readers intrigued or have them track the path of your thinking, and delay the thesis until later.