welcome to riding with dick today I have a very important question for you here it is what the heck is a thesis statement statement that sounds vaguely criminal doesn’t it like a deposition to police or something and thesis is that scientific like a hypothesis well no matter what you call it thesis statement controlling idea unifying concept you’ve got to have one for the same reason that a wheel has to have a hub to which it spokes attached because without that core concept in your essay around which everything revolves and to which everything attaches your essay could fall apart very very quickly let’s review a simple formula for writing a thesis it goes like this topic plus your opinion on that topic equals your thesis here’s an example let’s say your topic is prison overcrowding okay after thinking about and studying the topic you’ve arrived at an opinion about it prison overcrowding is a national shame now put those two together in one sentence and you have a thesis prison overcrowding in America is a national shame it’s as simple as that a thesis is simply your topic combined with the point you wish to make about that topic whether you call that point your opinion main idea slant belief hypothesis position or any of a number of synonyms for the same thing what you really want to say about that topic well that’s a relief isn’t it a thesis is neither a crime nor a scientific experiment it’s simply what you really want to say about a topic now that you have this good thesis statement you can use it to roadmap what is to come in the essay one of the key characteristics of a thesis statement is that it blueprints or predicts or roadmaps what has to come in the essay to follow let’s take a look at this characteristic and apply it to some common examples that you will likely encounter in school let’s begin with the topic already presented which was prison overcrowding our opinion a national shame we combine those two into a sentence to create our thesis prison overcrowding in America is a national shame now that thesis clearly predicts what must follow in the essay the writer will have to talk about shameful fact number one shameful fact number two and shameful fact number three in order to justify the thesis prison overcrowding is a national shame you see the writer really has very little choice there may be more than three shameful facts about prison overcrowding maybe fewer that depends upon the length of the assignment now here’s another important point if you alter the thesis the road map changes for example let’s change our thesis to this the reasons for prison overcrowding in America are shameful again the writer has very little choice in the essay must be shameful reason number one for overcrowding shameful reason number two for overcrowding and shameful reason number three for overcrowding or however many are required so once you have that thesis you have a very clear roadmap to what is going to follow and the rest of your essay this thesis as roadmap strategy can be used with a variety of topics that you encounter in let’s take a look at a few of these and some of the typical classes that you might find yourself in where you have to write essays this first copy could come from a history economics or sociology course and is also often encountered in the healthcare field here it is our topic is America’s aging population our opinion let’s see could cause problems in social security programs put those two together and we have our thesis America’s aging population will soon cause problems in social security programs now what must come in this essay to prove illustrate or corroborate that thesis you just read clearly there will have to be a discussion of Social Security problem number one that will be caused by the aging population social security problem number two social security problem number three and so on next here’s a possible topic from a business biology or even political science course industrial pollution the slant for your writing could be increased penalties for polluters now put those two together into a thesis statement increased penalties are needed for America’s industrial polluters clearly this essay will have to present evidence to justify the call for increased penalties in that thesis justification number one for increased penalties justification number two for increased penalties justification number three for increased penalty so as you see whatever you want to call that thing a thesis statement thesis sentence controlling idea unifying concept core concept slant theme whatever it is the hub of your essay if you get that thesis solid and precise you will roll right through your writing that’s a promise and that’s also today’s edition of writing with DES so long