How to Generate an Effective Thesis Statement
Updated 20 October 2005

1. Create a thesis that is subject to debate.  Do not merely state the obvious and do not state a widely accepted fact, value or opinion. Instead, write a thesis statement that requires evidence and reasoning. 

Obvious: Few women are elected to congress.  

Debatable: Women are rarely elected to congress because many voters feel that women are biologically incapable of political reasoning.  

2.  Create a thesis that is specific and narrow.  Vague and broad thesis statements usually encourage papers that lack specific evidence or specific reasoning, making for papers filled with truisms, clichés, and generalizations.  

Broad:  Great literature uses a lot of ideas in order to instruct and entertain the reader.

Specific: Shakespeare uses imagery from astronomy to convey the theme of fate in Romeo and Juliet.

3. Don't repeat the claim of the work(s) you are citing. While it is tempting to put an author's main idea into your own words to use as your thesis statement, remember that this leaves very little room to demonstrate your own critical thinking skills. If you repeat the author's claim, you end up with a paper that merely summarizes the assigned readings.  

Unoriginal: As Socrates, Thoreau, Ghandi, and King have said, unjust laws deserve to be broken.

Original: Dr. Kevorkian's participation in euthanazing patients is the most dramatic contemporary act of civil disobedience.

4.  Show confidence when wording your thesis statement.  Effective writers don't preface their claims by hedging.  If you have found sufficient evidence and formulated sufficient reasons, you can state your claim with confidence.

Unsure: Some may disagree, but I think that Dickinson may actually write more about doubt than faith.

Confident:  Emily Dickinson's poetry celebrates her doubt as much as it celebrates her faith.

5.  Revise so that your best thesis is in the first paragraph.  Many students do not articulate their main point until they write their whole paper.  Instead, their strongest, clearest, most focused thesis statement appears in their conclusion!  Be sure to revise your essay so that you place your strongest thesis in the first paragraph. 

For more information, please see a tutor in the Shepherd University Writing Center, Knutti 114
http://www.shepherd.edu/scwcweb/