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Writing Tutorial Services

Using evidence.

Like a lawyer in a jury trial, a writer must convince her audience of the validity of her argument by using evidence effectively. As a writer, you must also use evidence to persuade your readers to accept your claims. But how do you use evidence to your advantage? By leading your reader through your reasoning.

The types of evidence you use change from discipline to discipline--you might use quotations from a poem or a literary critic, for example, in a literature paper; you might use data from an experiment in a lab report.

The process of putting together your argument is called analysis --it interprets evidence in order to support, test, and/or refine a claim . The chief claim in an analytical essay is called the thesis . A thesis provides the controlling idea for a paper and should be original (that is, not completely obvious), assertive, and arguable. A strong thesis also requires solid evidence to support and develop it because without evidence, a claim is merely an unsubstantiated idea or opinion.

This Web page will cover these basic issues (you can click or scroll down to a particular topic):

• Incorporating evidence effectively.
• Integrating quotations smoothly.
• Citing your sources.

Incorporating Evidence Into Your Essay

When should you incorporate evidence.

Once you have formulated your claim, your thesis (see the WTS pamphlet, " How to Write a Thesis Statement ," for ideas and tips), you should use evidence to help strengthen your thesis and any assertion you make that relates to your thesis. Here are some ways to work evidence into your writing:

• Offer evidence that agrees with your stance up to a point, then add to it with ideas of your own.
• Present evidence that contradicts your stance, and then argue against (refute) that evidence and therefore strengthen your position.
• Use sources against each other, as if they were experts on a panel discussing your proposition.
• Use quotations to support your assertion, not merely to state or restate your claim.

Weak and Strong Uses of Evidence

In order to use evidence effectively, you need to integrate it smoothly into your essay by following this pattern:

• State your claim.
• Give your evidence, remembering to relate it to the claim.
• Comment on the evidence to show how it supports the claim.

To see the differences between strong and weak uses of evidence, here are two paragraphs.

Weak use of evidence

Today, we are too self-centered. Most families no longer sit down to eat together, preferring instead to eat on the go while rushing to the next appointment (Gleick 148). Everything is about what we want.

This is a weak example of evidence because the evidence is not related to the claim. What does the claim about self-centeredness have to do with families eating together? The writer doesn't explain the connection.

The same evidence can be used to support the same claim, but only with the addition of a clear connection between claim and evidence, and some analysis of the evidence cited.

Stronger use of evidence

Today, Americans are too self-centered. Even our families don't matter as much anymore as they once did. Other people and activities take precedence. In fact, the evidence shows that most American families no longer eat together, preferring instead to eat on the go while rushing to the next appointment (Gleick 148). Sit-down meals are a time to share and connect with others; however, that connection has become less valued, as families begin to prize individual activities over shared time, promoting self-centeredness over group identity.

This is a far better example, as the evidence is more smoothly integrated into the text, the link between the claim and the evidence is strengthened, and the evidence itself is analyzed to provide support for the claim.

Using Quotations: A Special Type of Evidence

One effective way to support your claim is to use quotations. However, because quotations involve someone else's words, you need to take special care to integrate this kind of evidence into your essay. Here are two examples using quotations, one less effective and one more so.

Ineffective Use of Quotation

Today, we are too self-centered. "We are consumers-on-the-run . . . the very notion of the family meal as a sit-down occasion is vanishing. Adults and children alike eat . . . on the way to their next activity" (Gleick 148). Everything is about what we want.

This example is ineffective because the quotation is not integrated with the writer's ideas. Notice how the writer has dropped the quotation into the paragraph without making any connection between it and the claim. Furthermore, she has not discussed the quotation's significance, which makes it difficult for the reader to see the relationship between the evidence and the writer's point.

A More Effective Use of Quotation

Today, Americans are too self-centered. Even our families don't matter as much any more as they once did. Other people and activities take precedence, as James Gleick says in his book, Faster . "We are consumers-on-the-run . . . the very notion of the family meal as a sit-down occasion is vanishing. Adults and children alike eat . . . on the way to their next activity" (148). Sit-down meals are a time to share and connect with others; however, that connection has become less valued, as families begin to prize individual activities over shared time, promoting self-centeredness over group identity.

The second example is more effective because it follows the guidelines for incorporating evidence into an essay. Notice, too, that it uses a lead-in phrase (". . . as James Gleick says in his book, Faster ") to introduce the direct quotation. This lead-in phrase helps to integrate the quotation with the writer's ideas. Also notice that the writer discusses and comments upon the quotation immediately afterwards, which allows the reader to see the quotation's connection to the writer's point.

REMEMBER: Discussing the significance of your evidence develops and expands your paper!

Citing Your Sources

Evidence appears in essays in the form of quotations and paraphrasing. Both forms of evidence must be cited in your text. Citing evidence means distinguishing other writers' information from your own ideas and giving credit to your sources. There are plenty of general ways to do citations. Note both the lead-in phrases and the punctuation (except the brackets) in the following examples:

Quoting: According to Source X, "[direct quotation]" ([date or page #]).

Paraphrasing: Although Source Z argues that [his/her point in your own words], a better way to view the issue is [your own point] ([citation]).

Summarizing: In her book, Source P's main points are Q, R, and S [citation].

Your job during the course of your essay is to persuade your readers that your claims are feasible and are the most effective way of interpreting the evidence.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Revising Your Paper

• Have I offered my reader evidence to substantiate each assertion I make in my paper?
• Do I thoroughly explain why/how my evidence backs up my ideas?
• Do I avoid generalizing in my paper by specifically explaining how my evidence is representative?
• Do I provide evidence that not only confirms but also qualifies my paper's main claims?
• Do I use evidence to test and evolve my ideas, rather than to just confirm them?
• Do I cite my sources thoroughly and correctly?

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Developing a Thesis Statement

Many papers you write require developing a thesis statement. In this section you’ll learn what a thesis statement is and how to write one.

Keep in mind that not all papers require thesis statements . If in doubt, please consult your instructor for assistance.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement . . .

• Makes an argumentative assertion about a topic; it states the conclusions that you have reached about your topic.
• Makes a promise to the reader about the scope, purpose, and direction of your paper.
• Is focused and specific enough to be “proven” within the boundaries of your paper.
• Is generally located near the end of the introduction ; sometimes, in a long paper, the thesis will be expressed in several sentences or in an entire paragraph.
• Identifies the relationships between the pieces of evidence that you are using to support your argument.

Not all papers require thesis statements! Ask your instructor if you’re in doubt whether you need one.

Identify a topic

Your topic is the subject about which you will write. Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic; or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper.

Consider what your assignment asks you to do

Inform yourself about your topic, focus on one aspect of your topic, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts, generate a topic from an assignment.

Below are some possible topics based on sample assignments.

Sample assignment 1

Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II.

Identified topic

Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis

This topic avoids generalities such as “Spain” and “World War II,” addressing instead on Franco’s role (a specific aspect of “Spain”) and the diplomatic relations between the Allies and Axis (a specific aspect of World War II).

Sample assignment 2

Analyze one of Homer’s epic similes in the Iliad.

The relationship between the portrayal of warfare and the epic simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64.

This topic focuses on a single simile and relates it to a single aspect of the Iliad ( warfare being a major theme in that work).

Developing a Thesis Statement–Additional information

Your assignment may suggest several ways of looking at a topic, or it may name a fairly general concept that you will explore or analyze in your paper. You’ll want to read your assignment carefully, looking for key terms that you can use to focus your topic.

Sample assignment: Analyze Spain’s neutrality in World War II Key terms: analyze, Spain’s neutrality, World War II

After you’ve identified the key words in your topic, the next step is to read about them in several sources, or generate as much information as possible through an analysis of your topic. Obviously, the more material or knowledge you have, the more possibilities will be available for a strong argument. For the sample assignment above, you’ll want to look at books and articles on World War II in general, and Spain’s neutrality in particular.

As you consider your options, you must decide to focus on one aspect of your topic. This means that you cannot include everything you’ve learned about your topic, nor should you go off in several directions. If you end up covering too many different aspects of a topic, your paper will sprawl and be unconvincing in its argument, and it most likely will not fulfull the assignment requirements.

For the sample assignment above, both Spain’s neutrality and World War II are topics far too broad to explore in a paper. You may instead decide to focus on Franco’s role in the diplomatic relationships between the Allies and the Axis , which narrows down what aspects of Spain’s neutrality and World War II you want to discuss, as well as establishes a specific link between those two aspects.

Before you go too far, however, ask yourself whether your topic is worthy of your efforts. Try to avoid topics that already have too much written about them (i.e., “eating disorders and body image among adolescent women”) or that simply are not important (i.e. “why I like ice cream”). These topics may lead to a thesis that is either dry fact or a weird claim that cannot be supported. A good thesis falls somewhere between the two extremes. To arrive at this point, ask yourself what is new, interesting, contestable, or controversial about your topic.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times . Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Derive a main point from topic

Once you have a topic, you will have to decide what the main point of your paper will be. This point, the “controlling idea,” becomes the core of your argument (thesis statement) and it is the unifying idea to which you will relate all your sub-theses. You can then turn this “controlling idea” into a purpose statement about what you intend to do in your paper.

Look for patterns in your evidence

Compose a purpose statement.

Consult the examples below for suggestions on how to look for patterns in your evidence and construct a purpose statement.

• Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis
• Franco turned to the Allies when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from the Axis

Possible conclusion:

Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: Franco’s desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power.

Purpose statement

This paper will analyze Franco’s diplomacy during World War II to see how it contributed to Spain’s neutrality.

• The simile compares Simoisius to a tree, which is a peaceful, natural image.
• The tree in the simile is chopped down to make wheels for a chariot, which is an object used in warfare.

At first, the simile seems to take the reader away from the world of warfare, but we end up back in that world by the end.

This paper will analyze the way the simile about Simoisius at 4.547-64 moves in and out of the world of warfare.

Derive purpose statement from topic

To find out what your “controlling idea” is, you have to examine and evaluate your evidence . As you consider your evidence, you may notice patterns emerging, data repeated in more than one source, or facts that favor one view more than another. These patterns or data may then lead you to some conclusions about your topic and suggest that you can successfully argue for one idea better than another.

For instance, you might find out that Franco first tried to negotiate with the Axis, but when he couldn’t get some concessions that he wanted from them, he turned to the Allies. As you read more about Franco’s decisions, you may conclude that Spain’s neutrality in WWII occurred for an entirely personal reason: his desire to preserve his own (and Spain’s) power. Based on this conclusion, you can then write a trial thesis statement to help you decide what material belongs in your paper.

Sometimes you won’t be able to find a focus or identify your “spin” or specific argument immediately. Like some writers, you might begin with a purpose statement just to get yourself going. A purpose statement is one or more sentences that announce your topic and indicate the structure of the paper but do not state the conclusions you have drawn . Thus, you might begin with something like this:

• This paper will look at modern language to see if it reflects male dominance or female oppression.
• I plan to analyze anger and derision in offensive language to see if they represent a challenge of society’s authority.

At some point, you can turn a purpose statement into a thesis statement. As you think and write about your topic, you can restrict, clarify, and refine your argument, crafting your thesis statement to reflect your thinking.

As you work on your thesis, remember to keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Sometimes your thesis needs to evolve as you develop new insights, find new evidence, or take a different approach to your topic.

Compose a draft thesis statement

If you are writing a paper that will have an argumentative thesis and are having trouble getting started, the techniques in the table below may help you develop a temporary or “working” thesis statement.

Begin with a purpose statement that you will later turn into a thesis statement.

Assignment: Discuss the history of the Reform Party and explain its influence on the 1990 presidential and Congressional election.

Purpose Statement: This paper briefly sketches the history of the grassroots, conservative, Perot-led Reform Party and analyzes how it influenced the economic and social ideologies of the two mainstream parties.

Question-to-Assertion

If your assignment asks a specific question(s), turn the question(s) into an assertion and give reasons why it is true or reasons for your opinion.

Assignment : What do Aylmer and Rappaccini have to be proud of? Why aren’t they satisfied with these things? How does pride, as demonstrated in “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” lead to unexpected problems?

Beginning thesis statement: Alymer and Rappaccinni are proud of their great knowledge; however, they are also very greedy and are driven to use their knowledge to alter some aspect of nature as a test of their ability. Evil results when they try to “play God.”

Write a sentence that summarizes the main idea of the essay you plan to write.

Main idea: The reason some toys succeed in the market is that they appeal to the consumers’ sense of the ridiculous and their basic desire to laugh at themselves.

Make a list of the ideas that you want to include; consider the ideas and try to group them.

• nature = peaceful
• war matériel = violent (competes with 1?)
• need for time and space to mourn the dead
• war is inescapable (competes with 3?)

Use a formula to arrive at a working thesis statement (you will revise this later).

• although most readers of _______ have argued that _______, closer examination shows that _______.
• _______ uses _______ and _____ to prove that ________.
• phenomenon x is a result of the combination of __________, __________, and _________.

What to keep in mind as you draft an initial thesis statement

Beginning statements obtained through the methods illustrated above can serve as a framework for planning or drafting your paper, but remember they’re not yet the specific, argumentative thesis you want for the final version of your paper. In fact, in its first stages, a thesis statement usually is ill-formed or rough and serves only as a planning tool.

As you write, you may discover evidence that does not fit your temporary or “working” thesis. Or you may reach deeper insights about your topic as you do more research, and you will find that your thesis statement has to be more complicated to match the evidence that you want to use.

You must be willing to reject or omit some evidence in order to keep your paper cohesive and your reader focused. Or you may have to revise your thesis to match the evidence and insights that you want to discuss. Read your draft carefully, noting the conclusions you have drawn and the major ideas which support or prove those conclusions. These will be the elements of your final thesis statement.

Sometimes you will not be able to identify these elements in your early drafts, but as you consider how your argument is developing and how your evidence supports your main idea, ask yourself, “ What is the main point that I want to prove/discuss? ” and “ How will I convince the reader that this is true? ” When you can answer these questions, then you can begin to refine the thesis statement.

Refine and polish the thesis statement

To get to your final thesis, you’ll need to refine your draft thesis so that it’s specific and arguable.

• Ask if your draft thesis addresses the assignment
• Question each part of your draft thesis
• Clarify vague phrases and assertions
• Investigate alternatives to your draft thesis

Consult the example below for suggestions on how to refine your draft thesis statement.

Sample Assignment

Choose an activity and define it as a symbol of American culture. Your essay should cause the reader to think critically about the society which produces and enjoys that activity.

• Ask The phenomenon of drive-in facilities is an interesting symbol of american culture, and these facilities demonstrate significant characteristics of our society.This statement does not fulfill the assignment because it does not require the reader to think critically about society.

Drive-ins are an interesting symbol of American culture because they represent Americans’ significant creativity and business ingenuity.

Among the types of drive-in facilities familiar during the twentieth century, drive-in movie theaters best represent American creativity, not merely because they were the forerunner of later drive-ins and drive-throughs, but because of their impact on our culture: they changed our relationship to the automobile, changed the way people experienced movies, and changed movie-going into a family activity.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast-food establishments, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize America’s economic ingenuity, they also have affected our personal standards.

While drive-in facilities such as those at fast- food restaurants, banks, pharmacies, and dry cleaners symbolize (1) Americans’ business ingenuity, they also have contributed (2) to an increasing homogenization of our culture, (3) a willingness to depersonalize relationships with others, and (4) a tendency to sacrifice quality for convenience.

This statement is now specific and fulfills all parts of the assignment. This version, like any good thesis, is not self-evident; its points, 1-4, will have to be proven with evidence in the body of the paper. The numbers in this statement indicate the order in which the points will be presented. Depending on the length of the paper, there could be one paragraph for each numbered item or there could be blocks of paragraph for even pages for each one.

Complete the final thesis statement

The bottom line.

As you move through the process of crafting a thesis, you’ll need to remember four things:

• Context matters! Think about your course materials and lectures. Try to relate your thesis to the ideas your instructor is discussing.
• As you go through the process described in this section, always keep your assignment in mind . You will be more successful when your thesis (and paper) responds to the assignment than if it argues a semi-related idea.
• Your thesis statement should be precise, focused, and contestable ; it should predict the sub-theses or blocks of information that you will use to prove your argument.
• Make sure that you keep the rest of your paper in mind at all times. Change your thesis as your paper evolves, because you do not want your thesis to promise more than your paper actually delivers.

In the beginning, the thesis statement was a tool to help you sharpen your focus, limit material and establish the paper’s purpose. When your paper is finished, however, the thesis statement becomes a tool for your reader. It tells the reader what you have learned about your topic and what evidence led you to your conclusion. It keeps the reader on track–well able to understand and appreciate your argument.

Writing Process and Structure

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Getting Started with Your Paper

Interpreting Writing Assignments from Your Courses

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Thesis vs. Purpose Statements

Architecture of Arguments

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Using Literary Quotations

Citing Sources in Your Paper

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Generating Ideas for Your Paper

Introductions

Paragraphing

Developing Strategic Transitions

Conclusions

Revising Your Paper

Peer Reviews

Reverse Outlines

Revising an Argumentative Paper

Revision Strategies for Longer Projects

Finishing Your Paper

Twelve Common Errors: An Editing Checklist

How to Proofread your Paper

Writing Collaboratively

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Developing A Thesis and Supporting Auguments

TIP Sheet DEVELOPING A THESIS AND SUPPORTING ARGUMENTS

There's something you should know: Your college instructors have a hidden agenda. You may be alarmed to hear this-yet your achievement of their "other" purpose may very well be the most important part of your education. For every writing assignment has, at the least, these two other purposes:

To teach you to state your case and prove it in a clear, appropriate, and lively manner To teach you to structure your thinking.

Consequently, all expository writing, in which you formulate a thesis and attempt to prove it, is an opportunity to practice rigorous, focused thinking habits that can result not only in better papers, but in sharper analytical skills across the board.

This TIP Sheet addresses the following steps common to any kind of non-fiction writing:

Choosing a subject. Limiting your subject. Crafting a thesis statement. Identifying supporting arguments. Revising your thesis. Writing strong topic sentences that support the thesis.

It is during these early stages of writing, particularly in the identification of supporting arguments, that students are most likely to flounder and procrastinate, and when the strength of a paper's thesis is frequently diluted for lack of rigorous thinking. Here we will adapt Aristotle's method of "discovering arguments" to help identify and develop a strong thesis. You may adapt this method to any nonfiction writing, including essays, research papers, book reports, or critical reviews.

1. Choosing a Subject Suppose your instructor asks you to write an essay about a holiday experience. Within this general subject area, you choose a subject that holds your interest and about which you can readily get information: you were in downtown Chico on the morning of St. Patrick's Day and witnessed some unusual behavior–a melee broke out, resulting in injuries to bystanders and property damage to nearby cars. You wish to write about this.

2. Limiting Your Subject What will you name your topic? Clearly, "student behavior" is too broad; student behavior would necessarily include behavior by every kind of student, everywhere, at all times, and this could very well fill a book and require a master's degree in psychology. Simply calling your subject "St. Patrick's Day" would be misleading. You decide to limit the subject to "student behavior on St. Patrick's Day." After some thought, you decide that a better, more specific subject might be "unruly college student behavior such as that witnessed in front of La Salle's in downtown Chico last St. Patrick's Day." (Be aware that this is not the title of your essay. You will title it much later.) You have now limited your subject and are ready to craft a thesis.

3. Crafting a thesis statement While your subject may be a noun phrase such as the one above, your thesis must be a complete sentence that declares where you stand on the subject. A thesis statement should almost always be in the form of a declarative sentence. Suppose you believe that some of the student behavior in front of La Salle's on St. Patrick's Day was very bad; your thesis statement may be, "Student behavior such as demonstrated in front of La Salle's last St. Patrick's Day is an embarrassment to the college community." Or, conversely, perhaps you think the behavior of the students was just a little high-spirited, but not really so bad as the newspaper made it out to be. Your thesis might be, "A college town has to expect a certain amount of student glee on holidays such as St. Patrick's Day; cracked auto glass and a couple of bruises are a small price to pay for all the commerce college students bring to downtown."

4. Identifying supporting arguments Now you must gather material, or find arguments to support your thesis statement. Aristotle taught his students to examine any claim by "discovering arguments." You will use some of his techniques to formulate support for your claim. Brainstorm, adapting the questions below as a guide, and writing down even the ideas that don't appear to you very promising–you can sort through them later.

• Definition: What is good behavior? What is bad behavior? What is appropriate behavior on St. Patrick's Day? What is appropriate behavior in other settings?
• Comparison/Similarity: How was behavior last St. Patrick's Day similar to behavior in years past? How was behavior in front of La Salle's similar to behavior in other parts of downtown that day? How was this behavior similar to behavior in other college towns on that day?
• Comparison/Dissimilarity: How did behavior last St. Patrick's Day differ from behavior in years past? How did behavior in front of La Salle's differ from behavior in other parts of downtown that day? How did this behavior differ from student behavior in other college towns on that day?
• Comparison/Degree: To what degree was student behavior worse than in years past? To what degree was this behavior worse than in other parts of downtown? To what degree was this behavior worse than student behavior in other college towns?
• Relationship (cause and effect): What causes good behavior? What are the results of good behavior? What causes bad behavior? What are the results of bad behavior? What were the specific results of the behavior on St. Patrick's Day? What were the specific causes of the behavior on St. Patrick's Day?
• Circumstance: Has this kind of behavior occurred in the past? Should this behavior be permitted in the future? What is possible–that is, in this case, is it possible for students to behave appropriately even if bored, drunk, or provoked? Is it possible for downtown merchants and bystanders to absorb the costs of property damage?
• Testimony: What are the opinions of others about student behavior in front of La Salle's on St. Patrick's Day (for example, students who participated, students who observed, students who were injured, students who avoided downtown Chico altogether on St. Patrick's Day, city council members, the police chief, the proprietor of La Salle's, the owner of the damaged car, nearby business owners)?
• The Good: Would the results of enforced good conduct be "good"? Would the results of enforced good conduct cause unintended or unforeseen problems? What is fair to whom?
• The Expedient: Is it desirable to require better conduct next St. Patrick's Day? Should authorities force better conduct next year? Should St. Patrick's Day celebrations be cancelled? Should everyone just relax about this incident and let students celebrate? Should students be asked to improve their conduct voluntarily next year? Should Associated Students provide an education campaign about respect for others, provide alternative activities, or additional patrols?

After brainstorming, you should have lots of material to support a thesis statement.

5. Revising your thesis Notice that in the sentence above we used the phrase "a thesis statement" rather than "your thesis statement." This is because, as you examine your thesis statement through the Aristotelian method, you may discover that you were wrong. At this point, you should either revise your thesis or choose another subject and begin again. Revising your opinion in light of convincing evidence is the beginning of wisdom. Besides, even if it is possible to proceed with the essay as you first envisioned it, you will find it more difficult to defend a thesis you have previously discredited in your notes.

6. Crafting topic sentences that support the thesis Using ideas you gathered using Aristotle's method, construct three to five topic sentences that support your claim. These topic sentences will become the framework for the rest of your paper. You will further support each with examples and citations from personal interviews, newspaper articles, or other appropriate references.

The melee was not caused by the students themselves; rather, an elderly homeless man spat on someone's shoe, causing her to move away suddenly, and a chain reaction occurred in the line waiting to go into La Salle's. (from examination of Aristotle's Relationship and Testimony)

Additional policemen would only increase tension in the downtown area, making altercations more likely. (from examination of Aristotle's The Good and The Expedient)

Trying to keep college students away from downtown on holidays like this would cause lost revenues for downtown merchants. (from examination of Aristotle's The Expedient)

As you continue to draft your paper you will, of course, revise these sentences as necessary to more precisely reflect your ideas and the support you gather for them. By this time you should have a good knowledge of your subject and know where you want to go with it. It will now be possible for you to find enough additional supporting material to complete your essay.

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Write Clearly: Using Evidence Effectively

What is evidence, what are primary and secondary sources, how do i use evidence, should i cite my evidence.

• Selecting and Analyzing Evidence
• Incorporating Evidence

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Most of the assignments you will do in university will ask you to make an argument, to take a stance, or to prove a hypothesis. The best way to do this is to research the topic, develop a thesis statement, hypothesis, or claim and then use evidence to support this claim.

Evidence is the facts, examples, or sources used to support a claim. In the sciences, this might be data retrieved from an experiment or a scientific journal article. In the humanities, it may be a quotation from the text, published information from academic critics, or a theory that supports your claims.

Think of evidence as the supports that buttress your claim, making it more solid than it would be alone. In fact, if you make a claim or an argument without evidence, your paper could appear to be unsupported opinion or not particularly well-researched. Even when the assignment elicits opinion, your paper will be more convincing if you provide evidence and the instructor may still be looking for an argument. It is also very important to remember that to use evidence effectively means to incorporate it well and to analyse it in a way that makes its connection to your argument clear and logical.

Evidence can be separated into two categories, primary and secondary sources.

Primary Sources

Primary sources are first-hand experiences, accounts, observations, reports, or narratives. Primary sources could include diaries, letters, contemporary newspapers, or eyewitness accounts of events. Official documents (e.g. the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms), data collected from surveys, and lab results are also primary sources. In the humanities, the text you are writing about is also considered your primary text. So, for example, if you are writing a paper on Macbeth, then the play is your primary source. In the sciences, primary sources are also the results of an experiment that have been peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are critiques written by academics and scholars. These sources are considered secondary because they examine primary sources to present an argument or support a point of view; as such, they may be selective with their evidence or insert themselves in a debate happening among a number of scholars. In the sciences, reviews, which are surveys of articles that demonstrate an understanding of a field, are considered secondary. It is a good idea to be aware of the bias in secondary sources when employing them as evidence.

Frequently the assignment will specify whether you need to use primary or secondary sources; however, if you are unsure about what kind of sources you need, ask your professor for clarification.

Among the forms of evidence you might draw from are:

• Graphs, charts, tables, or figures
• Experiments or studies done by peer-reviewed sources
• Surveys conducted by reputable sources
• Quotes or paraphrases from primary sources
• Quotes or paraphrases from secondary sources

Note: In general, you should not use quotes in science papers.

Each discipline and each genre of writing will have standards against which it will gauge the academic merit and use of evidence. But some general rules apply (a detailed explanation of each rule follows this list):

• Make sure your evidence is appropriate to the paper you are writing
• Make sure the evidence does, in fact, support your argument or your claims
• Tell your reader why this evidence supports your argument/claims
• Make sure you have an appropriate amount of evidence
• Make sure to appropriately cite your evidence

NOTE: Though not a general rule, your paper will be strengthened by acknowledging competing evidence – evidence that challenges your argument. This demonstrates that you have fully researched your topic and can counter claims against your argument.

After integrating your evidence into your paper, it is very important that you properly cite your evidence. Each discipline has their preferred style (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.); if you are unclear what citation style to use, ask your professor or teaching assistant for direction.

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Proving a Thesis – Evidence

Proving a Thesis

argumentative thesis

argumentative essay

reliable evidence

reliable narrator

unreliable narrator

accurate evidence

sufficient evidence

representative evidence

relevant evidence

argumentative thesis – a thesis which is debatable.

debatable – an issue for which there is more than one position; a controversial topic

argumentative essay – an essay whose thesis is to prove a debatable thesis. Since all essays take a stand on a topic even when describing or defining, it can be argued that all essays are argumentative.

evidence – the supporting information used such as examples, statistics, descriptions, comparisons, and illustrations; also called proof, support, or supporting evidence.

reliable evidence – consistent evidence; would the same circumstances have the same result

reliable narrator – a general presumption in sources that are purportedly factual is that the writer is reliable; however, that it is not necessarily accurate that the writer is presenting consistent or even accurate information even when that writer thinks he or she is. The term reliable narrator is used more frequently in literary analysis to describe that the person telling the story can be trusted to be giving reliable information.

unreliable narrator – when the person writing the source is not consistent or accurate. The term reliable narrator is used more frequently in literary analysis to describe that the person telling the story cannot be trusted to be giving reliable information.

accurate evidence – factual evidence

sufficient evidence – sufficiency is a question of whether even though the evidence used to prove the thesis may be reliable and accurate, it may not be enough to prove the thesis

representative evidence – even if the evidence is reliable, accurate, and sufficient, does the evidence represent the entire group involved in the analysis. For example, evidence which is reliable, accurate, and sufficient that shows a high correlation of pesticide content in certain foods may not have been drawn from samples from all over the country, so the incidence may be limited only to the area from which the sample was drawn

relevant evidence – while evidence offered may be reliable, accurate, sufficient, and even representative, it may not actually prove the point (the thesis)

refute – argue against the presented thesis or evidence in support of the thesis.

refutation – the act of refuting

concede – agree to a thesis or item of evidence

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Table of contents.

• Paragraphs and Essays
• MLA Documentation
• APA Documentation

Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to  be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

• Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

• Do I answer the question? Yes!
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Research Paper: A step-by-step guide: 3. Thesis Statement & Outline

• 1. Getting Started
• 2. Topic Ideas
• 3. Thesis Statement & Outline
• 4. Appropriate Sources
• 5. Search Techniques
• 6. Taking Notes & Documenting Sources
• 7. Evaluating Sources
• 8. Citations & Plagiarism
• 9. Writing Your Research Paper

About Thesis Statements

Qualities of a thesis statement.

Thesis statements:

• state the subject matter and main ideas of a paper.
• appear in the first paragraph and announces what you will discuss in your paper.
• define the scope and focus of your essay, and tells your reader what to expect.  
• are not a simple factual statement.  It is an assertion that states your claims and that you can prove with evidence.
• should be the product of research and your own critical thinking.
• can be very helpful in constructing an outline for your essay; for each point you make, ask yourself whether it is relevant to the thesis.

Steps you can use to create a thesis statement

1. Start out with the main topic and focus of your essay.

youth gangs + prevention and intervention programs

2. Make a claim or argument in one sentence.  It can be helpful to start with a question which you then turn into an argument

Can prevention and intervention programs stop youth gang activities?  How?  ►►►  "Prevention and intervention programs can stop youth gang activities by giving teens something else to do."

3. Revise the sentence by using specific terms.

"Early prevention programs in schools are the most effective way to prevent youth gang involvement by giving teens good activities that offer a path to success."

4. Further revise the sentence to cover the scope of your essay and make a strong statement.

"Among various prevention and intervention efforts that have been made to deal with the rapid growth of youth gangs, early school-based prevention programs are the most effective way to prevent youth gang involvement, which they do by giving teens meaningful activities that offer pathways to achievement and success."

5. Keep your thesis statement flexible and revise it as needed. In the process of researching and writing, you may find new information or refine your understanding of the topic.

You can view this short video for more tips on how to write a clear thesis statement.

An outline is the skeleton of your essay, in which you list the arguments and subtopics in a logical order. A good outline is an important element in writing a good paper. An outline helps to target your research areas, keep you within the scope without going off-track, and it can also help to keep your argument in good order when writing the essay.  Once your outline is in good shape, it is much easier to write your paper; you've already done most of the thinking, so you just need to fill in the outline with a paragraph for each point.

To write an outline: The most common way to write an outline is the list format.  List all the major topics and subtopics with the key points that support them. Put similar topics and points together and arrange them in a logical order.    Include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. 

A list outline should arrange the main points or arguments in a hierarchical structure indicated by Roman numerals for main ideas (I, II, III...), capital letters for subtopics (A, B, C...), Arabic numerals for details (1,2,3...), and lower-case letters for fine details if needed (a,b,c...). This helps keep things organized.  

Here is a shortened example of an outline:

Introduction: background and thesis statement

I. First topic

1. Supporting evidence 2. Supporting evidence

II. Second Topic

III. Third Topic

I. Summarize the main points of your paper II. Restate your thesis in different words III. Make a strong final statement

You can see examples of a few different kinds of outlines and get more help at the Purdue OWL .

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Chapter 4: Structuring, Paragraphing, and Styling

4.4 Supporting Evidence

Amanda Lloyd

Adding Supporting Evidence to Body Paragraphs

Supporting your ideas effectively is essential to establishing your credibility as a writer, so you should choose your supporting evidence wisely and clearly explain it to your audience.

Present your supporting evidence in the form of paraphrases and direct quotations.  Quotations should be used sparingly; that said, direct quotations are often handy when you would like to illustrate a particularly well-written passage or draw attention to an author’s use of  tone , diction, or syntax that would likely become lost in a paraphrase.

Types of support might include the following:

• Statistics and data
• Research studies and scholarship
• Hypothetical and real-life examples
• Historical facts
• Case histories
• Expert testimonies or opinions
• Eye-witness accounts
• Applicable personal experiences or anecdotes

Varying your means of support will lend further credibility to your essay and help to maintain your reader’s interest. Keep in mind, though, that some types of support are more appropriate for certain academic disciplines than for others.

Direct quotations and paraphrases must be integrated effortlessly and documented appropriately.  See section 11.4 for information on integrating supporting evidence with signal phrases and  section 12.2  for information about citations.

Providing Context for Supporting Evidence

Before introducing your supporting evidence, it may occasionally be necessary to provide some  context  for that information. You should assume that your audience has not read your source texts in their entirety, if at all, so including some background or connecting material between your  topic sentence  and supporting evidence is frequently essential.

The information contained in your evidence selection might need to be introduced, explained, or defined so that your supporting evidence is perfectly clear to an audience unfamiliar with the source material. For example, your supporting evidence might contain a reference to a concept or term that is not explained or defined in the excerpt or elsewhere in your essay. In this instance, you would need to provide some clarification for your audience. Anticipating your audience is particularly important when incorporating supporting evidence into your essay. See  section 3.2  for more information about audience awareness.

Now that we have a good idea what it means to develop support for the main ideas of your paragraphs, let’s talk about how to make sure that those supporting details are solid and convincing.

Good vs. Weak Support

When you’re developing paragraphs, you should already have a plan for your essay, at least at the most basic level. You know what your topic is, you have a working thesis, and you have at least a couple of supporting ideas in mind that will further develop and support your thesis. You need to make sure that the support that you develop for these ideas is solid. Understanding and appealing to your audience can also be helpful in determining what your readers will consider good support and what they’ll consider to be weak. Here are some tips on what to strive for and what to avoid when it comes to supporting evidence.

Attributions

This chapter contains material from “The Word on College Reading and Writing”   by Monique Babin, Carol Burnell, Susan Pesznecker, Nicole Rosevear, Jaime Wood , OpenOregon Educational Resources , Higher Education Coordination Commission: Office of Community Colleges and Workforce Development is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing by Amanda Lloyd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Module 9: The New Deal (1932-1941)

Supporting claims with evidence, learning objectives.

• Support historical arguments with evidence from sources

On the previous page, we learned how to identify and create a claim and a thesis statement for a historical argument. When authoring a historical research paper, the next steps involve supporting your thesis statement by synthesizing your research.

Supporting Your Argument

Remember, an argument is only an argument if you can give reasons why you think it’s true. These reasons  support the thesis claim, which sums up the point of the argument. The supports will be found in the paragraphs of the essay. To locate them, we can look for the “key sentences” of the paragraph. A key sentence sometimes called a “topic sentence,” will establish the paragraph’s main point. It also helps connect the paragraph to the overall argument.

Let’s look at an example. Here is more of the example essay we began on the previous page, which argues that, yes, New Deal spending and programs succeeded in restoring American capitalism during the Great Depression, and the government should have spent more money to help the New Deal succeed.

Sample Essay #2

Note that the thesis statement is highlighted in blue, and some supporting reasons connected to their claim are detailed in the second paragraph. The end of the second paragraph concludes with a key sentence that connects the paragraph to the argument.

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, America was in the midst of financial collapse. Banking holidays closed banks in 28 states, and investors traded their dollars for gold to have tangible wealth. The president reassured Americans, “This great Nation will endure as it has endured and will revive and will prosper.” He listed three goals to shore up capitalism through his New Deal: banking regulation, laws to curb speculation, and the establishment of a sound currency basis. Roosevelt shored up the financial sector through regulation to restore the public trust that mismanaged banks, and financial speculators had destroyed. His New Deal gave the federal government regulatory responsibility to smooth economic downturns. Over the next eight years, the New Deal’s economic practices and spending helped create recovery and restore capitalism.

By the time Roosevelt was inaugurated in the spring of 1933, almost 5,500 banks had failed, and, in many cases, their customers had lost their deposits and life savings. Therefore, Roosevelt’s first task was to restore confidence in the banking system, so on March 6, he declared a four-day national bank holiday. While banks were closed, Congress quickly approved the Emergency Banking Relief Act to audit the financial viability of banks and provide emergency currency. When banks reopened, the federal government guaranteed that banks were safe, and deposits outnumbered withdrawals. The following month, Roosevelt banned the use of gold for foreign exchange and increased its price to increase the U.S. gold supply and thereby causing inflation in a depressed economy suffering deflation. By June 1933, legislation required full disclosure for stock sales, and the Glass-Steagall Act separated consumer and investment banking to prevent bank speculation with consumer deposits. Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock market. These measures restored Americans’ faith in the financial system.

Synthesizing Evidence

At this point in the writing process, you have a claim and a thesis statement. You can now turn to synthesizing your evidence and presenting the historical context. Turn to your research and pull out the evidence that supports your claim. Cite your sources as you piece together the evidence. To do that, you’ll pull in information from your sources by paraphrasing, summarizing, or quoting from elsewhere (remember to use quotes sparingly!). When you are ready to write the body paragraphs of your essay, remember to:

• Present your evidence in a clear and compelling sequence.   Situate your evidence in an order that takes your reader step-by-step through your argument. Make sure that the examples you’ve chosen address your thesis and that they aren’t broad generalizations.
• Contextualize your evidence. Do you situate your evidence and research into the historical context? Don’t drop in quotes or summaries from elsewhere without explaining them and connecting them to your claim.

Link to learning: Essay outline

You can see an outline of an essay about the New Deal on page 3 of this writing guide .

Let’s take a look at another example. During the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, a U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a meeting with expert economists and historians to understand better what actions the government took to fight the Great Depression and what relevant lessons to the recession. One of the attendees was historian Allan Winkler. Read a passage from his prepared statement, keeping an eye out for how he both makes claims about the New Deal and uses evidence to support his arguments.

The New Deal: Accomplishments and Failures

Overall, what did the New Deal do?

First, it addressed the unemployed. A Federal Emergency Relief Administration provided direct assistance to the states to pass it on to those out of work. The following winter, a work-relief program provided jobs in the brief period it existed. Then, in 1935, FDR created the Works Progress Administration, which paid all kinds of people, including artists, actors, and authors, to work and build new schools, bridges, and other structures around the country. It was expensive, to be sure, but it made a substantial economic and emotional difference to the people it assisted.

Second, the New Deal sought to do something to promote recovery. The National Recovery Administration attempted to check unbridled competition, driving prices down and contributing to a deflationary spiral. It tried to stabilize wages, prices, and working hours through detailed codes of fair competition. Meanwhile, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration sought to stabilize prices in the farm sector by paying farmers to produce less.

Finally, throughout the New Deal, the administration addressed questions of structural reform. The Wagner Act, which created the National Labor Relations Board in 1935, was a monumental step forward in giving workers the right to bargain collectively and to arrange for fair and open elections to determine a bargain agent if laborers so chose. The Social Security Act the same year was, in many ways, one of the most important New Deal measures in providing security for those reaching old age with a self-supporting plan for retirement pensions. But there were other reform measures as well. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation were new. And the Glass-Steagall Act, only recently repealed with frightful consequences, separated commercial and investment banking.

Identifying Claims

Before we explore the supporting evidence, what claims is the author making about the New Deal?

Gathering Supporting Evidence

The speaker claims that the New Deal addressed unemployment. What supporting evidence does he use to back up that claim?

The speaker cites the direct assistance that the Federal Emergency Relief Administration provided to states as one piece of supporting evidence for the claim that the New Deal addressed unemployment. Notice, too, that the speaker offers many pieces of supporting evidence to argue for his claim, not just one piece of supporting evidence.

In the section above, Dr. Winkler highlighted the good brought about by the New Deal. That was just one section of his larger argument. His thesis statement was actually this:

• [The New Deal] was a multi-faceted attempt to deal with different elements of the catastrophe in ways that sometimes seemed haphazard and occasionally contradictory. On balance, though, the New Deal enjoyed some notable accomplishments, even if it failed to promote full-scale economic recovery.

This tends to be the general sentiment of most historians today, who argue that the New Deal programs made an impact but that government spending accelerated by World War II ended the Great Depression.

Putting It Together

Now that you’ve learned about creating a thesis statement and supporting your claims with evidence, you are well on completing a research assignment or writing an essay. It’s always a good idea to put your argument and supporting details together in an outline before you begin. See the example essay outline to see a standard structure for argumentative essays.

Example Argumentative Essay Outline

• provides background information on the topic
• states of your position on the topic (thesis)
• summarizes arguments 
• Topic sentence outlining the first claim
• Sentences giving explanations and providing evidence to support the topic sentence
• Concluding sentence – link to next paragraph
• Topic sentence outlining the second claim
• Sentences giving explanations and providing evidence to back the topic sentence
• Topic sentence outlining any possible counterarguments
• Provide evidence to refute counterarguments
• Summary of the main points of the body
• Restatement of the position
• Bibliography / Works Cited

Activity #2

Picking one of the thesis statements about your historical figure from the previous activity, create an essay outline supporting your thesis statement using supporting evidence. It can be a simplified version of the outline above, like this:

• Supporting evidence for claim:

Use the space below to jot down your ideas.

Primary source:  a first-hand or contemporary source of an event or topic.

Secondary source: relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source gives information about a primary source and typically involves generalization, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of the original information.

Thesis statement : a statement of the topic of the piece of writing and the angle the writer has on that topic

• Historical Hack: Crafting Historical Arguments.. Authored by : Kaitlyn Connell for Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Historical Hack: Crafting Historical Arguments.. Authored by : Yasmin Forbes for Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Common essay structures. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/englishcomp1/chapter/common-essay-structures/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Allan M. Winkler Prepared Statement given on March 31, 2009. Authored by : Allan M. Winkler. Provided by : U.S. Senate. Located at : https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-111shrg53161/pdf/CHRG-111shrg53161.pd . Project : Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

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9.2 Writing Body Paragraphs

Learning objectives.

• Select primary support related to your thesis.
• Support your topic sentences.

If your thesis gives the reader a roadmap to your essay, then body paragraphs should closely follow that map. The reader should be able to predict what follows your introductory paragraph by simply reading the thesis statement.

The body paragraphs present the evidence you have gathered to confirm your thesis. Before you begin to support your thesis in the body, you must find information from a variety of sources that support and give credit to what you are trying to prove.

Select Primary Support for Your Thesis

Without primary support, your argument is not likely to be convincing. Primary support can be described as the major points you choose to expand on your thesis. It is the most important information you select to argue for your point of view. Each point you choose will be incorporated into the topic sentence for each body paragraph you write. Your primary supporting points are further supported by supporting details within the paragraphs.

Remember that a worthy argument is backed by examples. In order to construct a valid argument, good writers conduct lots of background research and take careful notes. They also talk to people knowledgeable about a topic in order to understand its implications before writing about it.

Identify the Characteristics of Good Primary Support

In order to fulfill the requirements of good primary support, the information you choose must meet the following standards:

• Be specific. The main points you make about your thesis and the examples you use to expand on those points need to be specific. Use specific examples to provide the evidence and to build upon your general ideas. These types of examples give your reader something narrow to focus on, and if used properly, they leave little doubt about your claim. General examples, while they convey the necessary information, are not nearly as compelling or useful in writing because they are too obvious and typical.
• Be relevant to the thesis. Primary support is considered strong when it relates directly to the thesis. Primary support should show, explain, or prove your main argument without delving into irrelevant details. When faced with lots of information that could be used to prove your thesis, you may think you need to include it all in your body paragraphs. But effective writers resist the temptation to lose focus. Choose your examples wisely by making sure they directly connect to your thesis.
• Be detailed. Remember that your thesis, while specific, should not be very detailed. The body paragraphs are where you develop the discussion that a thorough essay requires. Using detailed support shows readers that you have considered all the facts and chosen only the most precise details to enhance your point of view.

Prewrite to Identify Primary Supporting Points for a Thesis Statement

Recall that when you prewrite you essentially make a list of examples or reasons why you support your stance. Stemming from each point, you further provide details to support those reasons. After prewriting, you are then able to look back at the information and choose the most compelling pieces you will use in your body paragraphs.

Choose one of the following working thesis statements. On a separate sheet of paper, write for at least five minutes using one of the prewriting techniques you learned in Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .

• Unleashed dogs on city streets are a dangerous nuisance.
• Students cheat for many different reasons.
• Drug use among teens and young adults is a problem.
• The most important change that should occur at my college or university is ____________________________________________.

Select the Most Effective Primary Supporting Points for a Thesis Statement

After you have prewritten about your working thesis statement, you may have generated a lot of information, which may be edited out later. Remember that your primary support must be relevant to your thesis. Remind yourself of your main argument, and delete any ideas that do not directly relate to it. Omitting unrelated ideas ensures that you will use only the most convincing information in your body paragraphs. Choose at least three of only the most compelling points. These will serve as the topic sentences for your body paragraphs.

Refer to the previous exercise and select three of your most compelling reasons to support the thesis statement. Remember that the points you choose must be specific and relevant to the thesis. The statements you choose will be your primary support points, and you will later incorporate them into the topic sentences for the body paragraphs.

Collaboration

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

When you support your thesis, you are revealing evidence. Evidence includes anything that can help support your stance. The following are the kinds of evidence you will encounter as you conduct your research:

• Facts. Facts are the best kind of evidence to use because they often cannot be disputed. They can support your stance by providing background information on or a solid foundation for your point of view. However, some facts may still need explanation. For example, the sentence “The most populated state in the United States is California” is a pure fact, but it may require some explanation to make it relevant to your specific argument.
• Judgments. Judgments are conclusions drawn from the given facts. Judgments are more credible than opinions because they are founded upon careful reasoning and examination of a topic.
• Testimony. Testimony consists of direct quotations from either an eyewitness or an expert witness. An eyewitness is someone who has direct experience with a subject; he adds authenticity to an argument based on facts. An expert witness is a person who has extensive experience with a topic. This person studies the facts and provides commentary based on either facts or judgments, or both. An expert witness adds authority and credibility to an argument.
• Personal observation. Personal observation is similar to testimony, but personal observation consists of your testimony. It reflects what you know to be true because you have experiences and have formed either opinions or judgments about them. For instance, if you are one of five children and your thesis states that being part of a large family is beneficial to a child’s social development, you could use your own experience to support your thesis.

Writing at Work

In any job where you devise a plan, you will need to support the steps that you lay out. This is an area in which you would incorporate primary support into your writing. Choosing only the most specific and relevant information to expand upon the steps will ensure that your plan appears well-thought-out and precise.

You can consult a vast pool of resources to gather support for your stance. Citing relevant information from reliable sources ensures that your reader will take you seriously and consider your assertions. Use any of the following sources for your essay: newspapers or news organization websites, magazines, encyclopedias, and scholarly journals, which are periodicals that address topics in a specialized field.

Choose Supporting Topic Sentences

Each body paragraph contains a topic sentence that states one aspect of your thesis and then expands upon it. Like the thesis statement, each topic sentence should be specific and supported by concrete details, facts, or explanations.

Each body paragraph should comprise the following elements.

topic sentence + supporting details (examples, reasons, or arguments)

As you read in Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” , topic sentences indicate the location and main points of the basic arguments of your essay. These sentences are vital to writing your body paragraphs because they always refer back to and support your thesis statement. Topic sentences are linked to the ideas you have introduced in your thesis, thus reminding readers what your essay is about. A paragraph without a clearly identified topic sentence may be unclear and scattered, just like an essay without a thesis statement.

Unless your teacher instructs otherwise, you should include at least three body paragraphs in your essay. A five-paragraph essay, including the introduction and conclusion, is commonly the standard for exams and essay assignments.

Consider the following the thesis statement:

Author J.D. Salinger relied primarily on his personal life and belief system as the foundation for the themes in the majority of his works.

The following topic sentence is a primary support point for the thesis. The topic sentence states exactly what the controlling idea of the paragraph is. Later, you will see the writer immediately provide support for the sentence.

Salinger, a World War II veteran, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, a disorder that influenced themes in many of his works.

In Note 9.19 “Exercise 2” , you chose three of your most convincing points to support the thesis statement you selected from the list. Take each point and incorporate it into a topic sentence for each body paragraph.

Supporting point 1: ____________________________________________

Topic sentence: ____________________________________________

Supporting point 2: ____________________________________________

Supporting point 3: ____________________________________________

Draft Supporting Detail Sentences for Each Primary Support Sentence

After deciding which primary support points you will use as your topic sentences, you must add details to clarify and demonstrate each of those points. These supporting details provide examples, facts, or evidence that support the topic sentence.

The writer drafts possible supporting detail sentences for each primary support sentence based on the thesis statement:

Thesis statement: Unleashed dogs on city streets are a dangerous nuisance.

Supporting point 1: Dogs can scare cyclists and pedestrians.

Supporting details:

• Cyclists are forced to zigzag on the road.
• School children panic and turn wildly on their bikes.
• People who are walking at night freeze in fear.

Supporting point 2:

Loose dogs are traffic hazards.

• Dogs in the street make people swerve their cars.
• To avoid dogs, drivers run into other cars or pedestrians.
• Children coaxing dogs across busy streets create danger.

Supporting point 3: Unleashed dogs damage gardens.

• They step on flowers and vegetables.
• They destroy hedges by urinating on them.
• They mess up lawns by digging holes.

The following paragraph contains supporting detail sentences for the primary support sentence (the topic sentence), which is underlined.

Salinger, a World War II veteran, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, a disorder that influenced the themes in many of his works. He did not hide his mental anguish over the horrors of war and once told his daughter, “You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose, no matter how long you live.” His short story “A Perfect Day for a Bananafish” details a day in the life of a WWII veteran who was recently released from an army hospital for psychiatric problems. The man acts questionably with a little girl he meets on the beach before he returns to his hotel room and commits suicide. Another short story, “For Esmé – with Love and Squalor,” is narrated by a traumatized soldier who sparks an unusual relationship with a young girl he meets before he departs to partake in D-Day. Finally, in Salinger’s only novel, The Catcher in the Rye , he continues with the theme of posttraumatic stress, though not directly related to war. From a rest home for the mentally ill, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield narrates the story of his nervous breakdown following the death of his younger brother.

Using the three topic sentences you composed for the thesis statement in Note 9.18 “Exercise 1” , draft at least three supporting details for each point.

Thesis statement: ____________________________________________

Primary supporting point 1: ____________________________________________

Supporting details: ____________________________________________

Primary supporting point 2: ____________________________________________

Primary supporting point 3: ____________________________________________

You have the option of writing your topic sentences in one of three ways. You can state it at the beginning of the body paragraph, or at the end of the paragraph, or you do not have to write it at all. This is called an implied topic sentence. An implied topic sentence lets readers form the main idea for themselves. For beginning writers, it is best to not use implied topic sentences because it makes it harder to focus your writing. Your instructor may also want to clearly identify the sentences that support your thesis. For more information on the placement of thesis statements and implied topic statements, see Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” .

Print out the first draft of your essay and use a highlighter to mark your topic sentences in the body paragraphs. Make sure they are clearly stated and accurately present your paragraphs, as well as accurately reflect your thesis. If your topic sentence contains information that does not exist in the rest of the paragraph, rewrite it to more accurately match the rest of the paragraph.

Key Takeaways

• Your body paragraphs should closely follow the path set forth by your thesis statement.
• Strong body paragraphs contain evidence that supports your thesis.
• Primary support comprises the most important points you use to support your thesis.
• Strong primary support is specific, detailed, and relevant to the thesis.
• Prewriting helps you determine your most compelling primary support.
• Evidence includes facts, judgments, testimony, and personal observation.
• Reliable sources may include newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books, encyclopedias, and firsthand testimony.
• A topic sentence presents one point of your thesis statement while the information in the rest of the paragraph supports that point.
• A body paragraph comprises a topic sentence plus supporting details.

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The thesis statement or main claim must be debatable

An argumentative or persuasive piece of writing must begin with a debatable thesis or claim. In other words, the thesis must be something that people could reasonably have differing opinions on. If your thesis is something that is generally agreed upon or accepted as fact then there is no reason to try to persuade people.

Example of a non-debatable thesis statement:

This thesis statement is not debatable. First, the word pollution implies that something is bad or negative in some way. Furthermore, all studies agree that pollution is a problem; they simply disagree on the impact it will have or the scope of the problem. No one could reasonably argue that pollution is unambiguously good.

Example of a debatable thesis statement:

This is an example of a debatable thesis because reasonable people could disagree with it. Some people might think that this is how we should spend the nation's money. Others might feel that we should be spending more money on education. Still others could argue that corporations, not the government, should be paying to limit pollution.

Another example of a debatable thesis statement:

In this example there is also room for disagreement between rational individuals. Some citizens might think focusing on recycling programs rather than private automobiles is the most effective strategy.

The thesis needs to be narrow

Although the scope of your paper might seem overwhelming at the start, generally the narrower the thesis the more effective your argument will be. Your thesis or claim must be supported by evidence. The broader your claim is, the more evidence you will need to convince readers that your position is right.

Example of a thesis that is too broad:

There are several reasons this statement is too broad to argue. First, what is included in the category "drugs"? Is the author talking about illegal drug use, recreational drug use (which might include alcohol and cigarettes), or all uses of medication in general? Second, in what ways are drugs detrimental? Is drug use causing deaths (and is the author equating deaths from overdoses and deaths from drug related violence)? Is drug use changing the moral climate or causing the economy to decline? Finally, what does the author mean by "society"? Is the author referring only to America or to the global population? Does the author make any distinction between the effects on children and adults? There are just too many questions that the claim leaves open. The author could not cover all of the topics listed above, yet the generality of the claim leaves all of these possibilities open to debate.

Example of a narrow or focused thesis:

In this example the topic of drugs has been narrowed down to illegal drugs and the detriment has been narrowed down to gang violence. This is a much more manageable topic.

We could narrow each debatable thesis from the previous examples in the following way:

Narrowed debatable thesis 1:

This thesis narrows the scope of the argument by specifying not just the amount of money used but also how the money could actually help to control pollution.

Narrowed debatable thesis 2:

This thesis narrows the scope of the argument by specifying not just what the focus of a national anti-pollution campaign should be but also why this is the appropriate focus.

Qualifiers such as " typically ," " generally ," " usually ," or " on average " also help to limit the scope of your claim by allowing for the almost inevitable exception to the rule.

Types of claims

Claims typically fall into one of four categories. Thinking about how you want to approach your topic, or, in other words, what type of claim you want to make, is one way to focus your thesis on one particular aspect of your broader topic.

Claims of fact or definition: These claims argue about what the definition of something is or whether something is a settled fact. Example:

Claims of cause and effect: These claims argue that one person, thing, or event caused another thing or event to occur. Example:

Claims about value: These are claims made of what something is worth, whether we value it or not, how we would rate or categorize something. Example:

Claims about solutions or policies: These are claims that argue for or against a certain solution or policy approach to a problem. Example:

Which type of claim is right for your argument? Which type of thesis or claim you use for your argument will depend on your position and knowledge of the topic, your audience, and the context of your paper. You might want to think about where you imagine your audience to be on this topic and pinpoint where you think the biggest difference in viewpoints might be. Even if you start with one type of claim you probably will be using several within the paper. Regardless of the type of claim you choose to utilize it is key to identify the controversy or debate you are addressing and to define your position early on in the paper.

Supporting an Argument

Strong and thorough evidence supports an argument or "claim," providing explanation in the form of quotes, statistics, personal reflections, and observations, to name a few. Yet, just including a statistic or quote (for instance) is not enough: to build a sound argument, it is important to:

• understand your argument and why the types of sources you are using are effective for your specific argument and field of study
• consider the variety of sources you employ
• integrate sources into your thoughts effectively

Know Your Argument

What is the difference between a Claim, Warrant, and Support?

• Claim: The main idea, thesis, belief, or opinion.
• Warrant ("the bridge"): The belief, value, assumption, and/or experience the writer hopes the audience shares or has in common with the writer. If the audience does not share a writer's warrant—assumptions about the subject or the support—the argument will most likely fail.
• Support: The statements that back up a claim. Support takes many forms: data, facts, personal experience, expert opinion, textual evidence, emotional appeals, etc. The more reliable and comprehensive the support, the more persuasive the argument.

Tips for Effectively Supporting Your Argument

• Analyze your prompt (e.g. a professor's instructions on an assignment, a journal's publishing expectations, etc.).
• Learn more about what is valued in your field in terms of acceptable evidence.
• Have a clear audience in mind and know what they expect--what will prove most effective in their eyes?
• Recognize and potentially acknowledge counter arguments.
• Understand the quality of a particular source (for example, don't include unreputable or outdated websites).
• Include multiple sources to back your argument.

General Rules for Incorporating Quotes or External Information into Your Own Thoughts

• Where is it drawn from?
• How does it relate to what you are saying?
• How is it similar (or not) to your argument/to previous research?
• Only include "need to know" information (for example, author names and relevant context).
• Try to put quotes "in conversation" with one another--make connections explicit in your topic sentences between paragraphs.
• Think of quote integration as a layering process: Provide the background, provide the quote, state how or why the quote relates to or supports your argument.
• Avoid including too many quotes or external source information within a single paragraph.

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Identifying Thesis Statements, Claims, and Evidence

Thesis statements, claims, and evidence, introduction.

The three important parts of an argumentative essay are:

• A thesis statement is a sentence, usually in the first paragraph of an article, that expresses the article’s main point. It is not a fact; it’s a statement that you could disagree with.  Therefore, the author has to convince you that the statement is correct.
• Claims are statements that support the thesis statement, but like the thesis statement,  are not facts.  Because a claim is not a fact, it requires supporting evidence.
• Evidence is factual information that shows a claim is true.  Usually, writers have to conduct their own research to find evidence that supports their ideas.  The evidence may include statistical (numerical) information, the opinions of experts, studies, personal experience, scholarly articles, or reports.

Each paragraph in the article is numbered at the beginning of the first sentence.

Paragraphs 1-7

Identifying the Thesis Statement. Paragraph 2 ends with this thesis statement:  “People’s prior convictions should not be held against them in their pursuit of higher learning.”  It is a thesis statement for three reasons:

• It is the article’s main argument.
• It is not a fact. Someone could think that peoples’ prior convictions should affect their access to higher education.
• It requires evidence to show that it is true.

Finding Claims.  A claim is statement that supports a thesis statement.  Like a thesis, it is not a fact so it needs to be supported by evidence.

You have already identified the article’s thesis statement: “People’s prior convictions should not be held against them in their pursuit of higher learning.”

Like the thesis, a claim be an idea that the author believes to be true, but others may not agree.  For this reason, a claim needs support.

• Question 1.  Can you find a claim in paragraph 3? Look for a statement that might be true, but needs to be supported by evidence.

Finding Evidence. 

Paragraphs 5-7 offer one type of evidence to support the claim you identified in the last question.  Reread paragraphs 5-7.

• Question 2.  Which word best describes the kind of evidence included in those paragraphs:  A report, a study, personal experience of the author, statistics, or the opinion of an expert?

Paragraphs 8-10

Finding Claims

Paragraph 8 makes two claims:

• “The United States needs to have more of this transformative power of education.”
• “The country [the United States] incarcerates more people and at a higher rate than any other nation in the world.”

Finding Evidence

Paragraphs 8 and 9 include these statistics as evidence:

• “The U.S. accounts for less than 5 percent of the world population but nearly 25 percent of the incarcerated population around the globe.”
• “Roughly 2.2 million people in the United States are essentially locked away in cages. About 1 in 5 of those people are locked up for drug offenses.”

Question 3. Does this evidence support claim 1 from paragraph 8 (about the transformative power of education) or claim 2 (about the U.S.’s high incarceration rate)?

Question 4. Which word best describes this kind of evidence:  A report, a study, personal experience of the author, statistics, or the opinion of an expert?

Paragraphs 11-13

Remember that in paragraph 2, Andrisse writes that:

• “People’s prior convictions should not be held against them in their pursuit of higher learning.” (Thesis statement)
• “More must be done to remove the various barriers that exist between formerly incarcerated individuals such as myself and higher education.” (Claim)

Now, review paragraphs 11-13 (Early life of crime). In these paragraphs, Andrisse shares more of his personal story.

Question 5. Do you think his personal story is evidence for statement 1 above, statement 2, both, or neither one?

Question 6. Is yes, which one(s)?

Question 7. Do you think his personal story is good evidence?  Does it persuade you to agree with him?

Paragraphs 14-16

Listed below are some claims that Andrisse makes in paragraph 14.  Below each claim, please write the supporting evidence from paragraphs 15 and 16.  If you can’t find any evidence,  write “none.”

Claim:  The more education a person has, the higher their income.

Claim: Similarly, the more education a person has, the less likely they are to return to prison.

Paragraphs 17-19

Evaluating Evidence

In these paragraphs, Andrisse returns to his personal story. He explains how his father’s illness inspired him to become a doctor and shares that he was accepted to only one of six biomedical graduate programs.

Do you think that this part of Andrisse’s story serves as evidence (support) for any claims that you’ve identified so far?   Or does it support his general thesis that “people’s prior convictions should not be held against them in pursuit of higher learning?” Please explain your answer.

Paragraphs 20-23

Andrisse uses his personal experience to repeat a claim he makes in paragraph 3, that “more must be done to remove the various barriers that exist between formerly incarcerated individuals such as myself and higher education.”

To support this statement, he has to show that barriers exist.  One barrier he identifies is the cost of college. He then explains the advantages of offering Pell grants to incarcerated people.

What evidence in paragraphs 21-23 support his claim about the success of Pell grants?

Paragraphs  24-28 (Remove questions about drug crimes from federal aid forms)

In this section, Andrisse argues that federal aid forms should not ask students about prior drug convictions.  To support that claim, he includes a statistic about students who had to answer a similar question on their college application.

What statistic does he include?

In paragraph 25, he assumes that if a question about drug convictions discourages students from applying to college, it will probably also discourage them from applying for federal aid.

What do you think about this assumption?   Do you think it’s reasonable or do you think Andrisse needs stronger evidence to show that federal aid forms should not ask students about prior drug convictions?

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For every claim you make in your writing, you will be required to prove your point. Your opinions and generalisations will need factual detail (evidence) to support them. Those supporting details may come from a number of different types of sources.

About placing evidence in your essay

In a standard essay, you can follow these general rules (i.e. rules may vary) about where you should put your evidence:

Click on each link for a description.

Supported facts and unsupported facts

Statements in academic writing need to be supported by factual details. When you are editing your writing, you will need to check that you have supported your claims with adequate evidence. For example:

Check the following sentence to see if you can recognise unsupported and supported facts:

The learning and teaching report showed that incorrect punctuation caused the most problems for students in conveying meaning in their essay writing (Department of Student Services, 2013, p. 23).

To convey meaning, students must punctuate their work correctly.

Types of supporting details

There are a number of ways you can support your claims in writing by using information/evidence from the work of (significant) writers and researchers. The following are three of the most common techniques:

• Quotations (e.g. direct quotes, paraphrases, summaries)
• Examples (e.g. illustrations of your points)
• Statistics (e.g. facts, figures, diagrams)

Check the following sentence to see if you can identify quotations, examples and statistics:

Many student writers have difficulty with some aspects of punctuation. For example, researchers (George et al., 2016; Jones & Brown, 2013; Smith, 2012) find that many students misuse commas, mix up colons and semicolons and use capital letters incorrectly.

In its research project, the Literacy Foundation (2014, p. 167) argues that “common punctuation errors cause problems with meaning-making in student writing”.

The Literacy Reference Group (2017, para. 10) finds that more than 60% of the students who were assessed on their literacy scale made errors in their punctuation.

Using supporting and opposing ideas

When you have sorted out the position you will take in your essay, you will write a number of paragraphs to provide support for your stance. It is also equally valuable to find information that does not support your stance and argue against those opposite points of view. Statements that you use to do this can follow a simple pattern:

• write support statement (sentence)

Read a 'supporting' argument

Supporting Argument

Writing about the opposing ideas

• write a statement with the idea you disagree with (the opposing idea)

Opposing Argument

Don’t do this.

• Don’t put information in your essay that comes from the recesses of your mind without finding an authority to support your statements
• Don’t use authorities that have no academic credibility (e.g. a popular magazine)
• Don’t use your lecture notes (even with appropriate referencing) as the sole authority in your assignments

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7: Identifying Thesis Statements, Claims, and Evidence

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Learning Objectives

This chapter teaches you how to identify the elements of argumentative writing: a thesis statement, claims, and evidence.

Thesis Statements, Claims, and Evidence

Introduction.

The three important parts of an argumentative essay are:

• A thesis statement is a sentence, usually in the first paragraph of an article, that expresses the article’s main point. It is not a fact; it’s a statement that you could disagree with. Therefore, the author has to convince you that the statement is correct.
• Claims are statements that support the thesis statement, but like the thesis statement, are not facts. Because a claim is not a fact, it requires supporting evidence.
• Evidence is factual information that shows a claim is true. Usually, writers have to conduct their own research to find evidence that supports their ideas. The evidence may include statistical (numerical) information, the opinions of experts, studies, personal experience, scholarly articles, or reports.

Each paragraph in the article is numbered at the beginning of the first sentence.

Paragraphs 1-7

Identifying the Thesis Statement. Paragraph 2 ends with this thesis statement: “People’s prior convictions should not be held against them in their pursuit of higher learning.” It is a thesis statement for three reasons:

• It is the article’s main argument.
• It is not a fact. Someone could think that peoples’ prior convictions should affect their access to higher education.
• It requires evidence to show that it is true.

Finding Claims. A claim is statement that supports a thesis statement. Like a thesis, it is not a fact so it needs to be supported by evidence.

You have already identified the article’s thesis statement: “People’s prior convictions should not be held against them in their pursuit of higher learning.”

Like the thesis, a claim be an idea that the author believes to be true, but others may not agree. For this reason, a claim needs support.

• Question 1. Can you find a claim in paragraph 3? Look for a statement that might be true, but needs to be supported by evidence.

Finding Evidence.

Paragraphs 5-7 offer one type of evidence to support the claim you identified in the last question. Reread paragraphs 5-7.

• Question 2. Which word best describes the kind of evidence included in those paragraphs: A report, a study, personal experience of the author, statistics, or the opinion of an expert?

Paragraphs 8-10

Finding Claims

Paragraph 8 makes two claims:

• “The United States needs to have more of this transformative power of education.”
• “The country [the United States] incarcerates more people and at a higher rate than any other nation in the world.”

Finding Evidence

Paragraphs 8 and 9 include these statistics as evidence:

• “The U.S. accounts for less than 5 percent of the world population but nearly 25 percent of the incarcerated population around the globe.”
• “Roughly 2.2 million people in the United States are essentially locked away in cages. About 1 in 5 of those people are locked up for drug offenses.”

Question 3. Does this evidence support claim 1 from paragraph 8 (about the transformative power of education) or claim 2 (about the U.S.’s high incarceration rate)?

Question 4. Which word best describes this kind of evidence: A report, a study, personal experience of the author, statistics, or the opinion of an expert?

Paragraphs 11-13

Remember that in paragraph 2, Andrisse writes that:

• “People’s prior convictions should not be held against them in their pursuit of higher learning.” (Thesis statement)
• “More must be done to remove the various barriers that exist between formerly incarcerated individuals such as myself and higher education.” (Claim)

Now, review paragraphs 11-13 (Early life of crime). In these paragraphs, Andrisse shares more of his personal story.

Question 5. Do you think his personal story is evidence for statement 1 above, statement 2, both, or neither one?

Question 6. Is yes, which one(s)?

Question 7. Do you think his personal story is good evidence? Does it persuade you to agree with him?

Paragraphs 14-16

Listed below are some claims that Andrisse makes in paragraph 14. Below each claim, please write the supporting evidence from paragraphs 15 and 16. If you can’t find any evidence, write “none.”

Claim: The more education a person has, the higher their income.

Claim: Similarly, the more education a person has, the less likely they are to return to prison.

Paragraphs 17-19

Evaluating Evidence

In these paragraphs, Andrisse returns to his personal story. He explains how his father’s illness inspired him to become a doctor and shares that he was accepted to only one of six biomedical graduate programs.

Do you think that this part of Andrisse’s story serves as evidence (support) for any claims that you’ve identified so far? Or does it support his general thesis that “people’s prior convictions should not be held against them in pursuit of higher learning?” Please explain your answer.

Paragraphs 20-23

Andrisse uses his personal experience to repeat a claim he makes in paragraph 3, that “more must be done to remove the various barriers that exist between formerly incarcerated individuals such as myself and higher education.”

To support this statement, he has to show that barriers exist. One barrier he identifies is the cost of college. He then explains the advantages of offering Pell grants to incarcerated people.

What evidence in paragraphs 21-23 support his claim about the success of Pell grants?

Paragraphs 24-28 (Remove questions about drug crimes from federal aid forms)

In this section, Andrisse argues that federal aid forms should not ask students about prior drug convictions. To support that claim, he includes a statistic about students who had to answer a similar question on their college application.

What statistic does he include?

In paragraph 25, he assumes that if a question about drug convictions discourages students from applying to college, it will probably also discourage them from applying for federal aid.

What do you think about this assumption? Do you think it’s reasonable or do you think Andrisse needs stronger evidence to show that federal aid forms should not ask students about prior drug convictions?

• Engaging With Sources Effectively

by acburton | Apr 30, 2024 | Resources for Students , Writing Resources

We’ve talked about the three ways to integrate sources effectively that allow writers to provide evidence and support for their argument, enter the scholarly conversation, and give credit to the original authors of the work that has helped and informed them. Sources also encourage writers to share their own knowledge and authority with others, help readers find additional sources related to the topic they are interested in, and protect you by giving credit where credit is due (thus avoiding plagiarism). In other words, sources are much more than just something we add on at the end of our writing!

When writing about a source or simply referencing it, we are positioning ourselves in response to, or in conversation with that source, with the goal of focusing our writing on our own argument/thesis. Sources do not stand on their own within a piece of writing and that is why, alongside finding strong and reputable sources worth responding to and making sure that we fully understand sources (even before writing about them), it is critical to engage with our sources in meaningful ways. But how exactly do we effectively engage with our sources in our writing?

Joseph Harris, in How To Do Things with Texts , presents four different ways of “rewriting the work of others”, three of which provide insight into the how of engaging sources. When a writer forwards the work of another writer, they are applying the concepts, topics, or terms from one reading, text, or situation to a different reading, text or situation. By countering the ideas found in source material, a writer argues “against the grain of a text” by underlining and countering ideas that a writer may be in disagreement with. Taking an approach is the adaptation of a theory or method from one writer to a new set of issues or texts. Harris’ book provides a thorough classification of methods to engage with a source. For something a little simpler, here are three basic ways you can get started effectively engaging with sources (Harris 5-7).

3 Basic Ways to Engage with Sources Effectively

• Disagree and Explain Why. Persuade your reader that the argument or information in a source should be questioned or challenged.
• Agree, But With Your Own Take. Add something new to the conversation. Expand a source’s insights or argument to a new situation or your own example. Provide new evidence and discuss new implications.
• Agree and Disagree Simultaneously. This is a nuanced approach to complex sources or complex topics. You can, for example, agree with a source’s overall thesis, but disagree with some of its reasoning or evidence.

Remember that this is not an exhaustive list. When engaging with others’ sources as a way to support our own ideas and argument, it is crucial that we engage with critical thinking, nuance, and objectivity to ensure that we are constructing unbiased, thoughtful, and compelling arguments.

Some of the different areas throughout your essay that will benefit from effective engagement with source material include: your thesis statement, analysis, and conclusion.

• Thesis Statement. The argument that you make in your thesis statement can challenge, weaken, support, or strengthen what is being argued by your source or sources.

Analysis. Thorough analysis in your body paragraphs emphasize the role of your argument in comparison to that found in your source material. Bring your analysis back to your thesis statement to reinforce the connection between the two.

• Conclusion. Consider the “big picture” or “takeaways” to leave your reader with.

There are many other, sometimes optional, essay sections or writing styles that benefit from critical engagement with a source. These can include literature reviews, reflections, critiques, and so on.

Strategies for Engaging Critically From Start to Finish

• Aim to dig deeper than surface level. Ask the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of a source, as well as ‘how’ and ‘why’ it is relevant to the topic at hand and the argument you are making.
• Ask yourself if you’ve addressed every possible question, concern, critique, or “what if” that comes to mind; put yourself in the place of your readers.
• Use TEAL body paragraph development as a template and guide for developing thorough analysis in your body paragraphs. Effectively engaging with your sources is essential to the analysis portion of the TEAL formula and to creating meaningful engagement with your sources.
• Visit the Writing Center for additional support on crafting engaging analyses and for other ways to engage with your source material from thesis to conclusion.

Our Newest Resources!

• Revision vs. Proofreading
• The Dos and Don’ts of Using Tables and Figures in Your Writing
• Synthesis and Making Connections for Strong Analysis
• Writing Strong Titles

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Book Review: Memoirist Lilly Dancyger’s penetrating essays explore the power of female friendships

In 2021 Lilly Dancyger’s first book, “Negative Space,” was praised for its unflinching portrait of her father’s heroin addiction

Who means more to you — your friends or your lovers? In a vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays, Lilly Dancyger explores the powerful role that female friendships played in her chaotic upbringing marked by her parents’ heroin use and her father’s untimely death when she was only 12.

“First Love: Essays on Friendship” begins with a beautiful paean to her cousin Sabina, who was raped and murdered at age 20 on her way home from a club. As little kids, their older relatives used to call them Snow White and Rose Red after the Grimm’s fairy tale, “two sisters who are not rivals or foils, but simply love each other.”

That simple, uncomplicated love would become the template for a series of subsequent relationships with girls and women that helped her survive her self-destructive adolescence and provided unconditional support as she scrambled to create a new identity as a “hypercompetent” writer, teacher and editor. “It’s true that I’ve never been satisfied with friendships that stay on the surface. That my friends are my family, my truest beloveds, each relationship a world of its own,” she writes in the title essay “First Love.”

The collection stands out not just for its elegant, unadorned writing but also for the way she effortlessly pivots between personal history and spot-on cultural criticism that both comments on and critiques the way that girls and women have been portrayed — and have portrayed themselves — in the media, including on online platforms like Tumblr and Instagram.

For instance, she examines the 1994 Peter Jackson film, “Heavenly Creatures,” based on the true story of two teenage girls who bludgeoned to death one of their mothers. And in the essay “Sad Girls,” about the suicide of a close friend, she analyzes the allure of self-destructive figures like Sylvia Plath and Janis Joplin to a certain type of teen, including herself, who wallows in sadness and wants to make sure “the world knew we were in pain.”

In the last essay, “On Murder Memoirs,” Dancyger considers the runaway popularity of true crime stories as she tries to explain her decision not to attend the trial of the man charged with killing her cousin — even though she was trained as a journalist and wrote a well-regarded book about her late father that relied on investigative reporting. “When I finally sat down to write about Sabina, the story that came out was not about murder at all,” she says. “It was a love story.”

Readers can be thankful that it did.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

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