How to Write a Thesis Statement – Guide & Examples

A thesis statement is a single comprehensive sentence that describes the main idea of your essay. Everything else in the essay will connect to the thesis statement that acts as the central theme. The reader should understand what you are going to talk about in your essay by reading the thesis statement.

You should write a thesis statement at the end of the introduction, making the readers decide whether they want to continue reading. Writing a thesis statement for your essay is often a challenging and crucial task. This article presents you with a detailed guide on how to write comprehensive thesis statements for your essays.

Also read: How to write an essay.

Types of Thesis Statements:

The following section presents the types of thesis statements and their examples to understand their usage better.

Argumentative Thesis Statement:

As in argumentative essays, you are supposed to present an argument with evidence and support one aspect. Your thesis statement should cover the significant argument you will present in your essay and the reason behind it.

Example:
You were asked to write an argumentative essay on ” is smoking bad for health?”
A weak thesis statement: “smoking is bad for health.”
A strong thesis statement: “smoking is bad for health as it can cause various diseases, reduce lifespan and worsen the quality of life.”

Expository Thesis Statement:

An expository or explanatory thesis statement explains your topic to the reader and the key aspects you will be discussing in the essay. The statement should deliver the central idea of the essay. A good thesis statement in an expository essay would spark interest and curiosity for more details in the reader.

Example:
A weak thesis statement: “vehicle exhaust can damage the environment.”
A strong thesis statement: “the harmful gases in vehicle exhaust can harm the environment and its constituents by causing air pollution.”

Also read: How to shorten an essay

Analytical Thesis Statement:

In this type of thesis statement, you will have to present the particular aspects that you will analyse in the essay. Through an analytical thesis statement, your readers will know exactly you are going to evaluate a certain piece of writing.

The reader should get an idea regarding in what way your analytical essay will be beneficial and insightful.

Example:
A weak thesis statement: “students face pressure during examinations.”
A strong thesis statement: “An analysis of the prevalent examination system suggests that students face extra pressure during examinations mainly due to the fear of being left behind in case of failure.”

How to Write a Thesis Statement?

You can write a strong thesis statement through the following steps.

Step # 1 – Decide your topic and type of essay:

If your teacher has not assigned a topic in academic essays, you would have to develop an exciting topic for your essay. It would be best if you chose the topic after thorough research to be confident about the topic while writing your essay. Moreover, it would be best to determine whether the essay is expository, argumentative, narrative, literary or rhetorical at the initial stage.

Step # 2 – Formulate a question:

After deciding on your topic for the essay, you need to choose a particular aspect that you will discuss throughout the essay. For this, you should formulate a question that serves as the basis of the thesis statement.

For example, if your essay topic is “junk food,” the question thus formulated can be “is junk food bad for health?” Your thesis statement would be an answer to this question.

Step # 3 – Write an initial answer:

You need to come up with an initial answer that would generally answer your question.

Example:
In the case of our chosen topic, your initial answer would be, “junk food is bad for health.”

Through your initial answer, you can decide your stance on the topic and the direction your essay will continue from this step onwards.

Step # 4 – Add reasoning to your answer:

A strong thesis statement also answers “how” and “why”. While claiming on a particular topic, you must provide logical reasoning to make a claim more valid and reliable. The final thesis statement will not just state your viewpoint. Instead, it would back up with reason and summarise the whole discussion.

For example, a developed thesis statement on the topic of junk food can be,
“Although junk food is consumed a lot by people, it is bad for health because it is the basic driving factor towards multiple serious complications such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart diseases.”

Qualities of a good thesis statement:

A strong thesis statement should have the following qualities,

• A single sentence that presents the central idea of the essay
• An arguable statement instead of a factual one, and it should be supported by evidence
• Specific; this means that you must take a specific stance on the topic
• Precise and focused on the main topic should formulate a stance
• Never be vague, judgemental, or combative
• Support your claims with enough reasoning and evidence