Thesis
Once you get to be a certain age, the thesis becomes highly emphasized in writing. I remember when I was younger and had to write papers, the thesis was essentially a sentence that I would spit out in the beginning of the paper, and then I would mumble a bit for the rest of the paper in hopes of somewhat proving my thesis sentence by the end. Once I reached high school, the thesis became something that set up the entire structure and content of the rest of the paper, and I was told that the thesis should be kept in mind throughout the entire process of writing the paper. Even so, I would often include ideas that were not directly related to my thesis within my papers. It wasn’t until I reached 11 grade and took AP Lang from a teacher who was revered but also feared, that I truly began to understand the thesis. She told us that every sentence within the paper should go back to our thesis; every sentence should be included with the hopes of further proving our thesis- even the sentences within the introduction that came before the thesis. Anything in the paper that was included without this intention would be considered “fluff.” Though it may seem unnecessarily strict- if the point of an argumentative paper is to prove a point, then why waste time trying to do anything other than that?
