Use thesis statements to announce the main idea.

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To help readers understand what is being said about a subject, writers often provide a thesis statement early in the essay. The thesis statement, which can comprise one or more sentences, operates as a cue by letting readers know which is the most important general idea among the writer’s many ideas and observations. In “Love: The Right Chemistry” in Chapter 4, Anastasia Toufexis expresses her thesis in the second paragraph:

O.K., let’s cut out all this nonsense about romantic love. Let’s bring some scientific precision to the party. Let’s put love under a microscope.

When rigorous people with Ph.D.s after their names do that, what they see is not some silly, senseless thing. No, their probe reveals that love rests firmly on the foundations of evolution, biology and chemistry.

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Readers naturally look for something that will tell them the point of an essay, a focus for the many diverse details and ideas they encounter as they read. They expect to find some information early on that will give them a context for reading the essay, particularly if they are reading about a new or difficult subject. Therefore, a thesis statement, like Toufexis’s, placed at the beginning of an essay enables readers to anticipate the content of the essay and helps them understand the relationships among its various ideas and details.

Occasionally, however, particularly in fairly short, informal essays and in some autobiographical and argumentative essays, a writer may save a direct statement of the thesis until the conclusion. In “Sticks and Stones and Sports Team Names,” for example, from Chapter 6, Richard Estrada explicitly states his thesis in his final paragraph:

It seems to me that what Native Americans are saying is that what would be intolerable for Jews, blacks, Latinos and others is no less offensive to them. Theirs is a request not only for dignified treatment, but for fair treatment as well. For America to ignore the complaints of a numerically small segment of the population because it is small is neither dignified nor fair.

Ending with the thesis brings together the various strands of information or supporting details introduced over the course of the essay and makes clear the essay’s main idea.

Some essays, particularly autobiographical essays, offer no direct thesis statement. Although this can make the point of the essay more difficult to determine, it can be appropriate when the essay is more expressive and personal than it is informative. In all cases, careful writers keep readers’ needs and expectations in mind when deciding how—and whether—to state the thesis.

EXERCISE 13.1

In the essay by Jessica Statsky in Chapter 6, underline the thesis statement, the last sentence in paragraph 1. Notice the key terms: “overzealous parents and coaches,” “impose adult standards,” “children’s sports,” “activities . . . neither satisfying nor beneficial.” Then skim the essay, stopping to read the sentence at the beginning of each paragraph. Also read the last paragraph.

Consider whether the idea in every paragraph’s first sentence is anticipated by the thesis’s key terms. Consider also the connection between the ideas in the last paragraph and the thesis’s key terms. What can you conclude about how a thesis might assert the point of an essay, anticipate the ideas that follow, and help readers relate the ideas to one another?

Question