Writing a Thesis Statement
Writing a Thesis Statement The thesis statement is the most important sentence in an essay. It is the sentence that states the main idea of your whole essay. Like the topic sentence of a paragraph, the thesis statement is the focus for every other idea in your essay. Your thesis statement is like the roof of a building. All the supporting ideas in your essay are like the columns that support that roof. Before you know how high to build your columns and where to place them, you will need to design a strong, clear thesis statement. How you design your thesis statement depends on the type of essay you are going to write. There are many different types of essay, including descriptive essays, argumentative essays, analytical essays, to name just a few, so it is difficult to make rules that work for all of them. However, there are some general guidelines that can be helpful to keep in mind.