Sections 7b and 48a of the ninth edition of The Little, Brown Handbook offer a concise definition of a Thesis Statement, and give various examples of good ones, and bad ones. Section 7b defines a thesis as "the main idea of your paper.... [which] makes the claim that you want your readers to accept or act on." Purdue University's "Owl" Writing Center has an excellent website devoted to the Thesis or Research Question calls it "a plan of attack for the keystone of your paper."

We suggest you supplement this information with what other universities and Writing Centers offer. Go to Google, the web's most efficient search engine, and type in the following, spaces and quotation marks included: