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blink, bugs bunny, eleanor roosevelt, essays, grey poupon, jack the ripper, john netley, leopold stokowski, malcolm gladwell, new york times bestsellers, outliers, research papers, rhetoric, sir william withey gull, the new yorker, the tipping point, thesis statement, walter sickert, what the dog saw
Daughter is currently taking an advanced high school writing course called Rhetoric. In it she and her classmates have to write a number of essays, one every few weeks or so. The teacher holds the students to high standards on these essays because she is trying to inculcate in them a superior writing ability while showing them the requirements of college papers.
Daughter takes this class seriously (so seriously that she periodically suffers Writer’s Panic). She asks me to read through each paper during the writing process in order to help her flesh out ideas. When she is finished, she has me check the papers for errors. Her essays undergo a second round of editing by various classmates, who serve as editing partners before papers get handed in.
This might sound strange, but Daughter’s editing partners tend to give her more editing suggestions than I do, even though I’ve been a practicing writer for longer. This is because the students are in a better position to understand the teacher’s requirements; they attend her class daily and know exactly what she is looking for in Rhetoric papers.
Because I’m not sitting in Daughter’s classroom, I’m left attempting to divine the teacher’s intentions from what Daughter has told me and often find myself disagreeing with the writing “rules” I’m gleaning second-hand. (Examples: Don’t ever start a paper with a question. Don’t ever use the words “very” and “thing.”) This is compounded by having been out of school for years and writing for a popular audience. In order to best reach that popular audience and make my writing enjoyable to them, I had to unlearn some of what I learned about writing college papers.
As I’ve been helping Daughter through the essay-writing process, it dawned on me that one of the things I’ve unlearned is the practice of using a thesis statement in my writing. Ah, the thesis statement! The sentence that’s supposed to appear at the end of an essay’s first paragraph that encapsulates what the piece is about.
Here are two examples written by me for my high school “The Research Paper: English 412” class that, incidentally, was the precursor to Daughter’s Rhetoric class:
From Jack the Ripper Put to Rest:
Although there are many theories as to the identity of Jack the Ripper, the most credible of them all proves that he was three people: Sir William Withey Gull, John Netley, and Walter Sickert.
From Astrology and Eleanor Roosevelt: Do They Stand on Common Ground?:
Although many people believe that a birth chart won’t predict the personality or life of a person, in the case of Eleanor Roosevelt, her horoscope is an accurate representation of her existance [sic].
These thesis statements dutifully show up at the end of the first paragraph of their respective papers. I cringe to read them, even though I got A’s on both papers. (Note the misspelling of “existence” in the second example. Yeesh! The teacher didn’t even catch it.)
Thesis statements come across as pedantic and bald; so overtly obvious that they smash the reader upside the head with a six-inch width of planking. They scream, “HERE IS WHAT I’M GOING TO PROVE!!” They take some of the mystery out of an essay, particularly when they show up at the end of the first paragraph, and can cause the reader to disengage from a piece.
In order to show that thesis statements do not need to appear in essays as traditionally taught, below are a few examples from a bestselling author. These are the final sentences of the first paragraphs of some of his essays.
She was Old World Orthodox, with severe, tightly pulled back hair; no one was good enough for her son.
Outside, television-satellite trucks were parked up and down the block.
He gets Bs and B-pluses.
Grey Poupon was magic.
Of all of these first paragraph final sentences, the closest one to a thesis statement is the last one, Grey Poupon was magic, and even that does completely explain the essay.
Any idea who wrote these sentences?
Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw, the first three of which were number one on the New York Times bestseller list, the fourth of which is a collection of his essays from The New Yorker magazine. The aforementioned sentences came from the following essays in What the Dog Saw (in order from above): True Colors, Open Secrets, The New-Boy Network, and The Ketchup Conundrum.
The New Yorker among writers is like the orchestra’s reaction to Bugs Bunny’s rendition of famous conductor Leopold Stokowski. “Leopold! Leopold!” orchestra members whisper in fervent awe, while writers mentally chant, “The New Yorker! The New Yorker!” with the same reverence. The point is, Malcolm Gladwell, with his position at The New Yorker and bestselling books, is recognized for knowing a thing or two about writing and he does not use thesis statements in a textbook manner.
That’s not to say he doesn’t use them at all. In fact, the taglines of his essays could easily stand in as traditional thesis statements if they were bogged down with a bit of unnecessary verbiage. The tagline for The Ketchup Conundrum, where the Grey Poupon sentence was taken, reads, “Mustard Now Comes in Dozens of Varieties. Why Has Ketchup Stayed the Same?”
Note that Gladwell has left a mystery in the reader’s mind by asking a question. He then sets about fully developing and explaining his thesis throughout the essay without resorting to spelling it letter-for-letter in the final sentence of the first paragraph. He leads readers on a journey, the whole of which makes his point, rather than any given part.
Without a doubt, the thesis statement is important to novice and experienced writers alike. It serves as a focusing agent, keeping the writer from spinning off into the hinterlands while writing and providing a map of where an essay ought to go.
Teaching beginning writers to consistently plop a thesis statement at the end of their first paragraphs, however, does a disservice to both writers and readers. I’d love to have Daughter come home with a Rhetoric assignment that requires her to write an essay that proves a thesis without actually stating that thesis. Papers generated from this assignment could then be shared in class, with other students discussing what they think is the intended thesis. This would provide clear proof of a writer’s ability to communicate.
The Woo Woo Teacup Journal 
As a college writing/rhetoric teacher I had to help my students unlearn a lot of rules from high school, including always have a thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph. I think one reason high school teachers come up with these rules is that students often want a formula for writing a paper. It is much easier to follow a bunch of rules, whether they make sense or not, than to actually analyze what you’re trying to say to whom and figure out the best way to say it, including (1) whether to state your thesis at all, and (2) if you state it where is the best place to put it. One advantage to having a thesis statement, whether you include it in the final essay or not, is that at least you know what you’re trying to say. It’s amazing the number of writers, both amateur and professional, who don’t always seem to know.
Judy – That has got to be the fastest complex comment I’ve ever received on a blog post, particularly a blog post of this length. I swear, I just hit the Publish button!
I wasn’t a writing major in college, so I didn’t get a class where I unlearned the stiff writing rules/formulas of high school. I’m glad someone on the college level (you!) was working to help students overcome them.
Rules are made to be broken.
Having said that, I constantly receive article submissions that fail because the author couldn’t structure the story in a logical way. The “classic” structure of a rhetorical essay — including some kind of formal thesis statement — provides a nice framework for the author to develop a supportable argument. But that’s all it does, and it might not be the best approach in every situation.
For the type of writing that I edit every day, some kind of “nut” graf usually is necessary for setting the stage. In my experience, when the writer omits any kind of nut graf/thesis statement, then that writer might not have a clear idea of where his or her paper is going, and more often than not the article will be a rambling jumble of obvious statements and self-serving nonsense.
By itself, a thesis statement can’t rescue such an article. But its absence provides an early indicator that what’s ahead might not make much sense.
I think it really depends on the audience of the article as well. For a number of years, I was on the editorial board of a local scientific journal. As part of my job, I reviewed and ranked the priority of articles prior to sending them for peer-review.
A scientific manuscript differs greatly from essays or other types of communcation in that it has a rigidly defined structure: Abstract, Intro, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion. Further, it’s a *really* bad idea to deviate from that formula.
The reason for this is fairly simple: scientific communiques typically aren’t read from beginning to end. Rather, a reader will first scan the abstract. If it is of interest, then she will likely read the intro, figure/legends and conclusion. If still interested, then the results, discussion and conclusion. If the article is really pertinent to her field, then she *might* give the methods a once over. (The methodology section becomes very important in repeating experiments. When trying to understand results and their implications, it is of less use. Limitations and other issues with the methodology should be explicitly laid out in the discussion section.)
It’s very important that all the proper information be located in the pertinent places. As I said above, being creative is typically a recipe for disaster; it forces the reader to work too hard to get at the data.
As an editorial reviewer, I had the authority to reject the paper prior to peer-review; and this was something I often did if the major points and relevant arguments of the paper weren’t clearly defined. An overt thesis statement, often at the end of the first paragraph could be very helpful in doing that.
(At the Utah journal, an editorial rejection was a “soft” rejection. The reason was explained and the authors were invited to revise and resubmit. A peer-review rejection, on the other hand, was typically a “hard” rejection. In most cases, the authors would not be allowed to resubmit or resubmission would require major revision.)
Teaching writing in places like Harlem NY, Richmond CA, East LA, etc., student writing can be a downright mess, and the thesis statement is the traditional/classic rule, along with body and conclusion, that helps illiterate children get a hold on their thoughts.
That being said, that rules are made to be broken is the traditional, unimplied rule of writing I have heard. Sometimes, when arguments are being made, thesis statements appear through the course of writing without the writer ever having been aware of it, but maybe they don’t appear in the precise, traditional location (this happens to me). Ultimately, you’re correct: if one is getting published, they’re doing something right, in spite of rules.
Helpful read here, Mary. I didn’t gasp at your statements like you did, those aren’t bad; I just can’t believe you still have those old essays!