WRITING TIPS
When you write papers at the college level, your prose should be clear; the essay should be well organized; above all, you should
believe that you have something important to say. The following tips should help you get a start not only with composition and
organization, but also with content.
The introduction should include your thesis statement.
The thesis states the main point of your paper. Very often you will have drawn a conclusion based on
presented details or evidence. That conclusion is your thesis.
The introduction should also outline a plan for your paper, indicating the order in which you will
present your supporting evidence.
Supporting paragraphs offer evidence. The body of the paper, which is made up of these paragraphs, proves
your thesis. These paragraphs show that your thesis is based on evidence, not unsupported assumptions.
The conclusion offers final comments on your analysis of the thesis statement and its supporting evidence.
You might sum up how you arrived at the introductory thesis and/or how you analyzed the evidence. You
might also leave the reader with a question or an idea to contemplate.
Most of the supporting paragraphs will have a similar structure – thesis, evidence, analysis.
A topic sentence, or a kind of thesis, provides the main point of the paragraph.
Evidence – Not assumptions. What are the details (from observations, from readings) that back up
the main idea of the paragraph as stated in the topic sentence?
Analysis – What conclusion do you draw from these details? An analysis offers the reader your
view based on the evidence.
As you write and after you finish the paper, polish your composition:
Check for common grammatical errors (handouts available at the Academic Resource Center).
Examine sentence construction and word choice – Each paragraph is made up of a number of
individual sentences. A sentence must have a subject and a verb and must be a complete unit of
meaning. When you compose each sentence, you need to think clearly about that meaning. What
do you want or need to say? A clearly written sentence will reflect your clear thinking.
Here are a few clues to clarity in college composition:
Be concise.
Simplify your wording.
Avoid the colloquialisms of casual speech.
Check for meaning – does this sentence say what you meant it to say?
When you put sentences together to form a paragraph, vary sentence structure and length.
Too many short sentences will result in choppiness.
Too many long sentences will be difficult to follow.
Vary sentence construction – run grammar and spelling checks, proofread, and read your
prose aloud. Find another reader to check the prose and the content.
You want to write a coherent paper – here are some helpful hints:
Repeat key words or terms. These key words or ideas usually originate in an introduction.
Repeat key ideas.
A topic sentence can also provide a link to the preceding paragraph.
The final part of the paragraph may also provide a transition to the next paragraph.
Center for Academic Excellence, Saint Joseph College, Barbara Stuart, January 1999, Revised 2001
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