Forming a Thesis

The information below is moderately adapted from Writing in Ethical Reasoning 22: Justice by Professor Michael Sandel from Harvard University, which can be found on the right of the screen.

Your thesis should directly respond to the question asked in the assignment. It should clearly and concisely state your main argument. A strong thesis is crucial to a good paper.

• Take a position and provide a reason for that position. It might be helpful to test whether your thesis could fit into the following model: (Statement of your position) because (reason for your position). You want to avoid simply restating the paper topic without actually making an argument. If your thesis is an argument it should be arguable, which means that it should be possible for a skeptical reader to disagree with the thesis. There also should be evidence available to support your thesis.

• Evaluate, don’t just describe. Your thesis should be your argument. Don't fall into the trap of simply summarizing the plot of your text or listing what you want to look at in your essay. You need to draw the readers attention to the "why" and not the "what" – why is the author presenting information in a certain way not just explaining what the author is saying.

• Don’t be overly ambitious. Make sure that your position is something you can actually defend in the required page limit of your assignment. Don't have a vague or overly broad sentence that would exceed your allotted space to fully explore. [Professor Sandel's example: you probably should not try to prove that Lockean liberalism is right or wrong, but you might be able to demonstrate that a particular moral controversy reveals a weakness in one facet of Locke’s theory. Also be careful about using language that is too broad such as “the free market is always unjust” or “rights may never be infringed by the state.” Such sweeping generalizations are usually uninformative and false.]

• Be specific. Don't use general or vague terms in your essays. More specific concepts can help you focus your paper and keep you from having to discuss all the different versions of rights theory, which would be beyond the scope of the paper. Your thesis should encapsulate the main argument of your paper in one or two sentences so make every word count. A vague thesis is a weak start to your paper. [The example Professor Sandel uses is the general term “rights”. To make sure that your thesis is strong, you would want to uses the more specific terms “inalienable rights” or “natural rights” or “property rights.”]

• Check to ensure your thesis fits the paper. After you have finished writing the paper, you should check to make sure it actually argues for the position you take in your thesis and for the reasons that you give in your thesis. It often helps to rewrite your thesis after you have completed a draft of the paper, since your position may have evolved as you wrote the argument.