If your document was the dead sea scroll of the year 2440, even though it was badly damaged from four centuries on a floppy disk, what is the one sentence that you hope is preserved?

A thesis statement which is useful to your readers helps them preview the form and content of the document and works with the introduction to orient them to what they're about to read. Check your thesis for the following 5 elements:

1. A thesis indicates what the your narrowed, focussed topic is. It is still general enough that you have room to maneuver, but it puts your ideas in a box which sets limits on what can and will be discussed in the document.

2. Probably the most important criteria for a thesis statement is that it anticipate the conclusion. Don't worry about giving too much away. Your readers need to know where the document is heading so they can put the information in the body into context. Readers feel uncomfortable about undertaking a trip with no destination. They use this information to decide if reading is worthwhile.

3. The readers should be able to speculate on the predominant rhetorical purpose of the document they are about to read. Any document, especially a research essay, will probably have snippets of each purpose, but you should set out to accomplish one thing in particular. That purpose will be the predominant rhetorical purpose. Your choices are to inform, analyze, persuade or argue. This purpose should be obvious in the thesis.

4. The thesis statement often contains a hint about your perspective on the topic. You might subtly indicate an anthropological perspective on the topic instead of the usual political one or claim that a situation requires urgent attention or focus on an especially significant aspect of the topic.

5. Especially for long or complicated documents, readers appreciate a thesis statemnt which hints at the order in which the information will be presented. Briefly outlining the content in the order it will appear emphasizes the orienting function of the thesis and introduction.

The following thesis statements are student generated. They are sometimes clunky because writers couldn't get all their ideas in one sentence, but they do contain the five elements discussed above and, therefore, provide a clear picture of what readers will find when they delve into the document.

**Public opinion about the use of animals to test the safety of household products and cosmetics shifted dramatically in the last decade. Now we look for labelling that tells us no animals were harmed in the production of these products. Animal rights activists continue to protest against the use of animals in medical research, but the use of animals for this purpose is ethical and necessary.**

This document will be about animals in medical research. The conclusion readers should anticipate is that such research is ethical and necessary. The rhetorical purpose is analytical, to explain why the writer thinks this way. The writer's perspective seems to be that the shift in public opinion about our use of animals should stop at medical research. Perhaps this writer will discuss the ethical differences between using animals for "frivolous" testing as compared to research to improve human health. Lastly, the thesis statement previews form and content. Readers should expect to find out why using animals in this way is "ethical" and then why it is "necessary."

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