Category essay structure

Your Essay’s Argument Might Be Hiding in Your Conclusion

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by Sonia Epstein

“a thesis statement shouldn’t be a teaser-trailer; it should be the ‘tl;dr’ of your paper”

I’m finishing up an essay about a 19th century British novel, a pretty typical “marriage plot” novel whose curtain closes on a headstrong female protagonist, now with a ring around her finger, ready to live out her happily-ever-after: she will not become destitute; she will enjoy a respectable social standing; she will have a husband who can provide for her. My thesis statement argues that although the novel traces the triumph of this marriage, as well as the marriage of the protagonist’s close female friend, it simultaneously traces the collapse of a different relationship—the friendship between the two young women.

I’m feeling good: writing teachers often say that a thesis statement—in any discipline—answers what, how, and why questions. In an essay about a literary text, for example, you might answer the question, “What is an author doing, and/or how?” (What language does the author use, what metaphors, what kinds of characters?) I know my essay is doing this—it’s describing what I think the author is doing (showing the dissolution of a friendship) and how (by juxtaposing it against successful marriage arrangements). But what I haven’t really done is explain why the author is doing this, or why it’s important to see these contrasting relationships together.

Because I’ve extensively re-chronicled the scenes in which the protagonist is manipulative of her friend—scenes that catalyze both the marriages’ success and the friendship’s decline—it’s hard for me to see that I’m only describing “what” is happening and not “why” it’s happening. But I’m six pages in, and it’s conclusion-time. I’m gleeful. I have that feeling you sometimes get when you know you’re approaching the end of your work, and you’re ready to sign off with an epic mic-drop. This whole marriage-plot-thing has honestly made me a little angry, so I try to channel that into my final paragraph, to end with a flourish. I write that maybe, if marriage at the time wasn’t so transactional, with women needing to evaluate whose wages and estate and family are most promising, then maybe there’d be more altruism; maybe the female relationships in the book wouldn’t be so doomed to fail. There—done!

In this final paragraph, almost unintentionally, I’ve actually answered a big “why” of my essay: I’ve convinced myself that by juxtaposing the marriage plot against the friendship, the book suggests how transactional both kinds of relationships were at risk of becoming in this era of the history of the British middle class. It was difficult to understand the broader implicationsof my initial, “factual claims” (“this is what’s happening in the book; this is how”) until I’d been sitting with them for several hours—and that’s why, time and time again, I’ve found compelling thesis statements hiding in the concluding paragraphs of others’ work and my own.

Sometimes, writers will feel obligated to keep those more-developed statements of their argument in the concluding paragraph: they worry that transplanting that argument to the introduction will “give away” everything they’re going to be talking about. But a thesis statement shouldn’t be a teaser-trailer; it should be the “tl;dr” of your paper.  Your body paragraphs are there to explain the logic behind the claims in your thesis of “what, how, and why,” and convince your reader of their validity, so that by the time the reader reaches your concluding paragraph(s), you will have the opportunity to restate that thesis with authority. Having done that, you can elaborate on the significance of that argument even further: how it might contribute to a broader understanding of a topic, field of inquiry, or existing body of scholarship. In my essay, for example, I might say that paying attention to the friendships in the book allows a reader to see that, in spite of the “happily-ever-after” ending, the author is actually presenting a critique of the types of relationships existing in this world, but uses the structures of the marriage plot to convey that message in a popular form.

Now that we’ve talked about how you might find a better version of your argument in your conclusion, here are a few main action-items for essay writers:

  • If you’ve finished a draft, copy and paste your intro and conclusion to a different document. To what extent do they match? Does the conclusion present a more specific, developed articulation of your thesis? If so, try to integrate that into your introduction, and put aside fears of “giving away the argument”—your reader doesn’t want to wait until the end of the piece to understand it.
  • Go back to your body paragraphs. If you’re describing what is happening (in a book, historical event, scientific study), are you also developing that into a discussion of why it’s happening and why it’s important? Rework sentences and paragraphs to make sure that you discuss the significance of your argument with specificity and clarity.
  • If you’ve identified that your argument isn’t fully developed in the ways described above, but you’re still working on the essay and don’t have a concluding paragraph to peak at, fear not! Have faith that the writing process can bring you toward a place of greater understanding. It may sound ridiculous, but try writing what you might imagine an impassioned conclusion to your essay could be. Go overboard; wax poetic. It’s just an exercise, and it may help you take a step back from your paper to consider its overall significance. Lastly, come visit us at the Writing Center! We’ll ask you why you felt compelled to write about the topic in the first place, and revisiting that question can help you forge your path forward.

When you don’t have much time to revise, focus on topic sentences.

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by Nicole Kagan and Nicolas Yan

What are topic sentences?

Topic sentences are sentences that lead each paragraph of an essay. Think of them as flags: at the beginning of each paragraph, you are “flagging” to the reader what the direction of the paragraph will be (more concretely, what the claim you are making in that paragraph is).  

Why are topic sentences important?

Topic sentences are important both for the reader and for the writer. Because topic sentences clearly present arguments in a way that flows, they allow a reader to understand not only the direction of each paragraph, but also the snowball structure of the paragraphs taken together. That is, before you can prove Y (your thesis), you must first prove X1, X2, and X3 (every claim made in the body paragraphs). For the writer, meanwhile, topic and supporting sentences are essential for conceptually and specifically outlining the structure of the essay and increasing its clarity. 

Paying attention to topic sentences can often deliver the highest return on investment when it comes to editing your paper, especially if you don’t have much time. As a general rule of thumb, somebody reading your essay should be able to gain a good understanding of what your argument is about by simply reading the introduction, each topic sentence, and the conclusion. By going through this “skim-reading” exercise and revisiting your topic sentences, you should be able to identify any logical or structural weaknesses in your argument, particularly with regards to the order of your paragraphs.

So what makes for an effective topic sentence?

An effective topic sentence should accomplish four main functions:

  1. It should highlight the claim (i.e., the main idea) of the paragraph that follows;
  2. It should organize and advance your argument by relating back to your thesis statement and developing your argument’s logical progression;
  3. It should create signposts that enable the reader to easily follow your argument, often by utilizing bridge words (see this blog post for more on bridge words); and
  4. It should be specific—if it would be possible to pick up your topic sentence and drop it into another essay with a different thesis, then it is not specific enough. 

To illustrate these functions more clearly, let’s take a look at the topic sentences of an example essay.

Imagine that you have been asked to discuss whether the most effective way of reducing gas consumption is providing government subsidies for electric vehicles. You might decide to argue this thesis:

Although subsidizing electric vehicles would help to reduce gas consumption, an effective government strategy must also boost the demand of electric vehicles relative to gas-powered cars by instituting a gas tax.

Your argument might proceed according to the following steps:

  1. First, you might begin with a general explanation of how subsidies work.
  2. Next, you might explain how subsidizing electric vehicle production would reduce gas consumption.
  3. Then, you might concede that pursuing a strategy of government subsidies in isolation may have some drawbacks.
  4. Next, you might argue that governments should simultaneously pair subsidies for electric vehicle production with a tax on gas.
  5. Finally, you might want to address a potential counterargument.

Your topic sentences should therefore mirror the structure of your argument:

  1. TS1: To understand this argument, it’s important to understand that government subsidies work by encouraging companies to increase the production of a particular good by lowering production costs.
  2. TS2: Government subsidies for electric vehicles would reduce gas consumption by increasing the supply, and decreasing the price, of electric vehicles.
  3. TS3: However, insofar as subsidizing electric vehicles would only target the supply of electric vehicles, pursuing such a strategy in isolation would have certain drawbacks.
  4. TS4: Therefore, in order to target both the supply of and the demand for electric vehicles, governments should simultaneously pair electric vehicle subsidies with a gas tax.
  5. TS5: Though some might argue that subsidizing public transportation would be a more effective way of reducing gas consumption, such a policy would overlook those who live in more rural areas that lack connectivity to public transportation networks. 

Each of these example topic sentences clearly highlights the claim, or main idea, of the paragraph that will follow. Additionally, these sentences clearly organize and advance the argument—each topic sentence logically builds upon the previous one. The argument would not make sense if the topic sentences were rearranged (for example, TS4 could not precede TS3, since the claim in TS4 logically depends on the claim in TS3). Furthermore, using signpost words (like “however,” and “therefore”) helps to signal transitions between ideas to the reader. And perhaps most important, these topic sentences make specific claims that would not easily fit into a different argument. Finally, they pass the “skim-reading” test; reading each of the topic sentences would give the reader a pretty good idea of the overall argument, even without the body paragraphs.

Why does everything have to be an argument?

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by Elliot Schiff

My first year of college, in Expos and other humanities classes, I would get this feedback from my instructors: “Elliot, could you make your thesis statement more argumentative?” Or, “Elliot, this is a good paragraph but it’s missing an argumentative topic sentence.” I couldn’t help but think, “Why does everyone think this argument thing is so great?” It felt like everyone in an academic position of power over me had met in some room and decided unanimously that argument is good and we like argument. Why?

I’ll give you two answers, one theoretical and one practical. These are answers that I’ve come to understand through my experience as a writer, a student, and a tutor.

Imagine that there’s a national academic conference of experts on bouncy balls (maybe there is? maybe there should be…). Who knows what they’d look like or be wearing — probably elbow patches, they’re academics after all, they’ve got a public image to maintain. These are the people the world relies on to understand what’s important about the science of the very very important and ever-confounding bouncy ball. The conference gathers. They’ve got a huge stack of papers to peer review. It’s gonna be a long day.

“Bouncy Balls are Often Made of Rubber,” the first paper is titled. Not off to a great start. The contents of the paper are not any better. As a matter of fact, it’s just that sentence repeated over and over: “Bouncy balls are often made of rubber.” We know this, the experts cry. For ten pages. A prank. For some reason, some punk has decided to make fun of the very serious field of Bouncy Ball Studies.

Time to peer review another paper. This one’s called “From Handheld Toy to Exercise Ball: How Highly Elastic Rubber Spheres Went from Mere Distraction to Lifestyle and Fitness Craze.” We know this! The experts protest once more. Of course they know that the handheld toy led to the exercise ball that brought abs of steel to office workers across America. But then they read the paper: it makes specific claims they haven’t seen before. The paper’s fundamental argument is that the exercise ball’s former life as a plaything led to success and predated the gamifying of fitness to make it more fun. Here’s an argument! The stakes of the conversation are about what we think about when we think about bouncy rubber spheres, but also the history of American fitness culture.

This is all made up — and wildly oversimplified. But in the second paper on the history of bouncy balls, the author is making an argument. Simply put, when you make an argument, you are contributing something new to the conversation. That’s why your instructors keep asking you to be argumentative at every turn: it’s the best way to ensure that you’ll contribute something to a broader academic conversation. How cool is that! This is the theoretical answer to the question, “Why argument?”

The practical answer to “why argument” is that a highly argumentative paper is an easier paper to structure and revise. Think back to those bouncy ball papers. If you had to write a paper whose thesis statement was, “Bouncy balls are often made of rubber,” how the heck would you structure that thing? What evidence would you put where–and why? What would you even analyze? On the other hand, if your thesis was that the exercise ball rose to prominence in American offices not only because of its fitness benefits but because of its origins in play, now you’re cooking with gas. You would probably start with a history of the bouncy ball: its invention, its absolutely unanimous popularity — frankly its dominance over the toy market and the imaginations and Christmas wish-lists of American youth. Then, you would probably do the same with the exercise ball, a markedly different product, even though it’s largely the same material. You’d look at the marketing of the exercise ball, partnerships with offices, the history of office labor in the U.S. You’d find primary sources about the exercise ball as a replacement for the chair and compare those to firsthand accounts of the joy of the bouncy ball. And then you would be able to prove your point: the exercise ball really did rise to popularity in American offices because it is inextricable from its roots as a fun toy. Then you’d do some cultural analysis to connect this idea to the current ubiquity of gamified fitness.

This is not that great of a paper. I admit it. It’s also totally made up. But it helps me prove my point: see how much easier it is to structure a more argumentative paper? With a highly argumentative thesis, your natural wheels of logic start to turn, and moments where you’d otherwise be pulling your hair out over the right place to make a sub-claim or offer a piece of evidence suddenly become much easier.

This logic of the argumentative thesis making your life easier applies on the micro level (topic sentence) just as much as the macro (thesis statement). A paragraph with a non-argumentative topic sentence could often contain just about anything, but a paragraph with a highly argumentative topic sentence must contain evidence and analysis to prove the point outlined in the topic sentence. The same is true with the thesis statement: often, with a non-argumentative thesis statement, just about anything could be in the paper. Let’s make that very weak bouncy ball thesis a little better: “The bouncy ball’s shift from leather to rubber shows the use of post-WWII use of military materials in the toy sector.” If this is true (I have no idea), chances are that bouncy ball experts already know this. But because this thesis is slightly more argumentative than the original, you know that the paper will have to contain a discussion of military materials being repurposed in the civilian sector. That’s more focused and more specific than a paper focused only on the fact that bouncy balls are made of rubber, which increases the likelihood that the paper will say something new.

Does my paper flow? Tips for creating a well-structured essay.

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by Jessica Diaz

A sure way to improve your paper is to strengthen the way you present your argument. Whether you only have a thesis statement or already have a fully-written essay, these tips can help your paper flow logically from start to finish.

Going from a thesis statement to a first outline

Break down your thesis statement

No matter what you are arguing, your thesis can be broken down into smaller points that need to be backed up with evidence. These claims can often be used to create a ready outline for the rest of your paper, and help you check that you are including all the evidence you should have.

Take the following thesis statement:

Despite the similarities between the documentaries Blackfish and The Cove, the use of excessive anthropomorphism in Blackfish allowed it to achieve more tangible success for animal rights movements, illustrating the need for animal rights documentaries to appeal to human emotion.

We can break the thesis down into everything that needs to be supported:

[1] Despite the similarities between the documentaries Blackfish and The Cove, [2] the use of excessive anthropomorphism in Blackfish [3] allowed it to achieve more tangible success for animal rights movements, [4] illustrating the need for animal rights documentaries to appeal to human emotion.

In the paper, we have to (1) explain and support the similarities between the two documentaries, (2) provide support for excessive anthropomorphism in Blackfish, (3) show that Blackfish achieved more tangible success than The Cove, and (4) demonstrate the importance of human emotion in animal documentaries.

Already, we have four main points that can serve as the backbone for an essay outline, and they are already in an order that makes some intuitive sense for building up the argument.

It is likely that you will need to rearrange, expand, or further break down the outline. For example, in this case we would probably need to add a paragraph that explains anthropomorphism. We also might want to move the section on differences in animal rights success earlier so that it contrasts with the similarities between the films. However, having this starting structure and identifying the main sections of the paper can allow you to go ahead and start writing!

Checking that your argument builds

Reverse outline

While writing, it is often hard to take a step back and assess whether your paper makes sense or reads well. Creating a reverse outline can help you get a zoomed-out picture of what you wrote and helps you see if any paragraphs or ideas need to be rearranged.

To create a reverse outline, go through your paper paragraph-by-paragraph. For each one, read it and summarize the main point of the paragraph in 3-5 words. In most cases, this should align closely with the topic sentence of that paragraph. Once you have gone through the entire paper, you should end up with a list of phrases that, when read in order, walk through your argument.

Does the order make sense? Are the ideas that should go together actually next to each other? Without the extra clutter, the reverse outline helps you answer these questions while looking at your entire structure at once.

Each line of your reverse outline should build on the last one, meaning none of them should make sense in isolation (except the first one). Try pretending you don’t know anything about this topic and read one of your paragraph phrases at random (or read it to someone else!). Does it make sense, or does it need more context? Do the paragraphs that go before it give the context it needs?

The reverse outline method and the line of thinking detailed above help put you in the mind of your reader. Your reader will only encounter your ideas in the order that you give offer them, so it is important to take this step back to make sure that order is the right one.

Building Bridges Between Your Paragraphs

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by Kenneth Mai

Your essay doesn’t flow. Add some transitions.

Those words – along with comments such as “Needs better transitions,” “Where’s the transition?,” or simply “TRANSITION!!!” – plague many a paper that may perhaps otherwise be brilliant.

See, it’s like this. Pretend that the many ideas you’re churning out within a paper are islands in the ocean. (That’s a metaphor! Sometimes metaphors work nicely in papers! ) Some islands are bigger than others. Some are closer to each other, whilst some may seem to be drifting off far away from all the others. Similarly, some ideas are smaller bits a cohesive whole, while others require a bit more effort to reel in. Your task is to  gather these islands into a sort of kingdom that you rule. But in order  to make sure that you have full control over everything, you need to connect the islands to each other. Now, it’s fine that each island isn’t directly connected to every other island, especially when they’re far enough away from each other to not really be related at all. But ultimately you want all the islands connected to make up a unified whole. So what do you do?

You build bridges!

In the context of writing a paper, these bridges are your transitions. You have two ideas that are related— islands that are close enough that you can build a bridge between them—but ultimately distinct. In order to help your readers across that gulf, then, you need to put in a transition.

But what exactly is a transition? Is it one of the sequential words – “first,” “second,” “finally,” etc. – that were the gold standard of midde school writing? Well…perhaps. But you have many more options now.    The kind of transition you use depends on the relationship that you’re trying to build between two ideas, and those relationships can be quite complex.  Transitions can be as short as a word or a couple of words to something as long as a sentence or even an entire paragraph. What’s important isn’t so much the shape of the transition as the underlying connection that is being made.

Here are a few useful types of transitions to keep in mind.

  1. Sequential Transitions: Here, we’re not talking so much about “first, second, third.” Rather, this kind of transition points more towards the ideas that logically follow each other. Words such as “therefore” or “then,”  or phrases like “This indicates that…”, show a relationship between the ideas.  These transitions are used when one idea is the premise on which the next idea depends or when the second idea comes as a deduction from the first.
    Examples: Thus, Therefore, Then; It follows that, This indicates that, This implies that; From this we can see that, What this means is that…
  2. Comparative Transitions: Sometimes, it’s not so much that one idea is derivative of another, but rather that they share some sort of property. This is especially useful when the relationship between the two ideas isn’t obvious. This type of transition is useful in comparative essays (for obvious reasons) but also instrumental when you are using analogies to make a point about some sort of topic (such as talking about islands to make a point about transitions!)
    Examples: Like, Also, Similarly; Just as, In the same vein; This idea can also be seen in…, A similar phenomenon is found in …
  3. Contrastive Transitions: There are times when you’re neither describing premise-conclusion relationships nor looking at similarities, but instead focusing on contrasts: “This author says this, but that author says that.” “This appears to be the case, but in reality, it’s something else.” These transitions are useful not only in compare-and-contrast essays, but also whenever you’re trying to debunk a claim or to show another side of an issue. These words can also help you to move on to an entirely different issue.
    Examples: But, Though, However, Nevertheless/Nonetheless; Then again, On the other hand, At the same time; This ignores, It’s not…but rather, The difference between…and…is that…
  4. Summing Up Transitions: You’ve established an idea and thrown lots of brilliant evidence our way. Now what? In order to make sure your readers won’t miss important information, it’s a good idea provide the quick and dirty version of the ideas you just laid out before introducing your big, final insight.
    Examples: Essentially, Basically, Ultimately; In short, In other words, That is to say; This boils down to, The main point is…

Ultimately, the goal of these tools is to bring a sense of cohesion to your paper by showing the logical progression of your thoughts; they’re signposts telling your reader which bridge to cross and what the two islands linked by that bridge have to do with each other. These signposts ought to be everywhere within your paper, moving your reader between phrases and sentences in addition to paragraphs or larger chunks. Sometimes multiple signposts are needed to guide a reader across the bridge, because of the complex relationship of those two ideas. The primary goal to keep in mind, though, is to make sure your reader has a smooth trip. That’s how you make your paper flow.

In my next post, I’ll offer some examples of transitional sentences and paragraphs.